Apology and Introduction
 

I have been posting under the female moniker Gwennie!, but I am a 50 yo male software engineer. I am sorry if I offended anyone. I was just goofing around and I didn't expect to last at this forum. But, I got attached to this place. I didn't mean to mess around with anyone. I figure No harm, no Foul. Everything I said under the other moniker was true except the genders. Anyway, I apologize.

At most forums I belong to, I am Rock Steady. I am obsessed with Gwen Stefani. In an attempt to embrace reality, here is an introduction.

At home, I have a wonderful wife and two teenagers. My high-school-senior son has a high-functioning form of autism known as Asperger Syndrom. That and our teenage daughter keep us busy. My wife is a classical pianist. We are from Long Island and lived in Pittsburgh, PA for 15 years beforing moving to the Silicon Valley in 1997.

Started programming in BASIC in high school in 1971 on a TTY-33 over a 110 baud modem to a PDP-10. Got my CS PhD in 1984. Been a search engineer since 1996. I am a chief software architect at one of the largest Internet advertising networks serving over 9 B impressions a month. (In a face near you, ha.) My job is to use linguistic analysis to target advertising to the content of the web page on which the ad appears.

Made some stock option money in the internet bubble, but I blew my early retirement seed funding my own company. We got several VC meetings but no investment. After nine months I laid off all four employees. Last year I was fortunate enough to sell my company and join the parent company as an employee. I continue my work at this fast-growing highly-profitable company.

I have a weakness for consumer electronics.

I am a big fan of the Steelers, Raiders, Trailblazers, and Warriors. Starting next season I have Warriors season tix.

I like the Cellarites. You guys rawk.

well... okay then. please don't do more of that.. and there are better people to be obsessed with.

for the record I learned basic, cobal and lotus.... got into music and food and forgot them all. damn the bad luck! a the time it looked like a dead end :)

anyway.. kinda shitty for you to do that..the rest of them might take it badly, but thank you for being honest.

ps. you had a 110! we had 33! lucky dog!

thanks for not flaming me.

Actually, I'm sure the most active members figured this out already.

Mostly what I did since I've been back after a 14 month hiatus is to support Brianna. So, it wasn't that shitty of me. I've been Gwennie! at other forums, but properly labeled from the beginning as a pretendster.

As I've said on another forum, RS is a smart motherfucker, and I'm a better person for knowing him.

Ah, what's in a name... I don't think I spoke to Gwennie, but hi to you Rock. Good honest turnaround. :thumbsup:

i started to type out a spoof about my actually being a 50 yr old empty nest-ed house frau. but then ...it wasnt that funny.

...and to think i showed you my yule log. faeg.

i feel kind of dirty and violated now. and 'rock steady' reminds me of 'rock hudson'. add that to the weird obsessive fixation on gwen and the 'fact' that you're a 40something father, and you get some pretty creepy soup. wearing a butt plug right now? do you cross dress, too?


~to those of you that have been honest about who you are, thank you. this makes me appreciate that a little bit more. ~


i'm still calling you gwennie.

Personally, I'm relieved, I thought the posting-as-if-you-were-Gwen was more than a little stalkerish. What does your family think about your obsession, you don't have a No Doubt themed room in your house or anything, do you?

oh right, like he's the only one in here with an unhealthy fixation. some of these people worship trees for pete's sake. not to mention the friggin cat people. entire threads filled with pics of these loathesome creatures. and the jesus freaks. and the friggin existentialists. and the democrats. if there's not at least 3 crossdressers here, we're missing our quota.

yesterday i was going to PM gwennie and find out if she was actually gwen stefani. then i saw 'software engineer' in the profile (always read your profiles, people) and my immediate thought was...."this is a dude."

and you are dirty and violated, lj. that's what makes your yule log so damn attractive.

everyone's nuts, RS. welcome to the funny farm (and the healthful glow of being honest with your co-cellarites).

The Cellar was co-founded by a transsexual, and lived in the house of another trans for a year.

Honesty and openness is valued here. To me, this thread makes up for the original deception. Someone else might have just created a new account and gone legit without mentioning the past situation, or maybe just slunk off into the night. This is a better solution all around.

And UT still looks damn hot in a dress.

This sounds like a job for "Photshop Phrenzy".... :)

Well ain't that something. Rock Steady, you WILL send my pictures back and you WILL keep your mouth shut. Understand SHUT! :lol2:
Seriously, welcome to the Cellar in spite of Sycamore's praise.

:eyebrow: a girl couldn't possibly be a software engineer, huh?

You are not alone as far as being a parent of an aspie

no. girls want to date and get married :lol:

and anyway, I was right, wasn't I?

Hrm....wait...your terms aren't supposed to be that mutually exclusive there, are they noodle?

I am a girl (wait while I check, it's been a while and I forget....yup....have the mandatory ovaries)

I'm a software engineer. (finally!)

Believe it or not, I DO date....and eventually I'd like to get married and have a family. I've just not had much luck with meeting a 'quality' applicant for the position.

Yes, I'm demanding...but not overly so. (Although some peoples opinions may vary, mine happens to be the right one.)

I haven't dated in a year, so i need to make fun of other people to quench the bitterness and loneliness. please leave me alone with my guitars and my jabby stick of sarcasm,all of you.

actually two people have tried to set me up, but i will have none of it. they just want me married and miserable like them. hey brianna? i guess it does take awhile for the bad juju to go away. learn from my example and get over it quicker.

Well I think I know who you work for, are you willing/able to talk about your work at all, it's, as i'm sure you're well aware, a rather interesting field these days.

Hi from the library! Home of sticky keyboard keys!! I don't care if you came on as Gwennie or whatever. I thought you were nice and I appreciate your mojo. I'm really a 41 year old woman but my name's not Brianna--that's my Ultimate name. At least it WAS. Now I just want to be called Jane. Jane Doe.

Hey now...juju may be a bit weird, but he IS from Arkansas. He's not a bad guy at all...just...different.

Personally, I have to no problem with cross-dressers, because they aren't being dishonest; they are being themselves. But someone who deliberately misleads everyone as a way of "goofing off"... that's just childish. It's stringing people along for your own amusement. True, you came clean here (presuming this persona isn't another fabrication), and that blunts some of the obnoxiousness off... but it's still childish.

Not that I feel strongly about it... in the end, it's the content that matters here, not the person... but this sort of thing inspires people to keep a large grain of salt handy whenever they run across one of your posts.

jag, if you're talking about me, i can talk about my job. but i'd prefer not to name the publication i work for since i access this forum from work and....i dunno, it seems tawdry.

but what is this excitement you speak of, and where can i find it? i just edited a nifty beginner's guide to XML, and next I'm doing a case study on a trucking company and which high availability software they use.
:lol: i'm pretty sure it's not one of those, though.

where the hell is juju for that matter?

He went to work for Walmart Corporate.

He's been taken over by a pod.

yeah, well. i dont really have any issue with them or tranny's either for that matter. and i'm not really even mad at gwennie, either. like it matters on here, anyway. the thing that bugs me is that she is a little bit flirty. that's wrong. so........ now we all know.


.....cock.

eh? don't we all have a face we show the world and a face only we know?

maybe i'm the oddball, but you guys really know me.
the real me. i'm more honest here than in real life.

and cowhead, have you been listening to Billy Joel?

Oh no, don't tell me you're a spy from G--gle!

I believe there are a number of companies that fit the description I gave. Of course, I can only say so much about the work. After five years of doing this, the world is finally ready for it. Ra!

i really am the person the person you see in the cellar. except i'm probably more personable IRL because it isn't polite to piss everyone off all the time.

I just have a No Doubt poster on the inside part of the door to my home office. My family is used to my fondness of Gwen and No Doubt; I don't make a big deal about it at home. This is why I admire them:

No Doubt was not an overnight success. It took many years of hard work, relentless touring, and perseverance for the band to accomplish what they have achieved. It is an inspiration to me to keep up my own hard work and be patient.

If you believe in what you are doing, even if the odds are long, remember: No Doubt Anytime!

March 1992 ... the program director (of LA radio station KROQ) ... "It would take an act of God for this band to get on the radio." ...

The band stuck together for 8 years before they saw big success

Nice to meet you Rock.

And thanks for proving my theory about the majority of flirty young women on the internet. Do you take your show into chat rooms as well? And do you ever pretend to be an Asian Teenager?

I said goofing, but it was that I developed this Gwennie! character at two other forums with full disclosure ahead of time. Here I was seeing if I developed a realistic character. I'm sorry you were unknowing participants in an experiment. I only did it for a few weeks last year and a couple of weeks this year.

Nice to meet you Wolf. Yes your theory is prolly right. No I don't use chat rooms at all. No I always use the Gwennie! character.

I actually thought you suspected and were just playing along. When I recently returned, I toned down the flirtiness. At other forums I found that the guys don't like to play along, but the gals often do like to play along. Sorry, man.

Yes. You get a gold star. :thumb:

well at least we have our own nut-house resident protector - Wolf :ipray:

Yes, a female friend of mine conducted the search for many years and did get married.

The funniest thing she told me was that she got to the point where sometimes it was quickly clear a guy was a loser. She had some dinner dates where she ended the evening after talking with the guy while they were waiting for a table at the bar. She figured why waste time on a loser? Well, she is a CFO afterall, and likes efficiency.

Go ahead and screen those applicants carefully.

In mentioning that I have no problem with cross-dressers, I wasn't meaning to imply that you do. But while we're on the subject... I am strangely aroused by you.

Thanks. I liked the way you bared your soul about what you are going thru. I was a little more free in talking in that thread as my other character.

just because of that one night, alan. remember? that song came on the radio, and the fire was just right, and you said, " just hold me, jimmy. just hold me" that night seemed to last forever. sigh......

Sycamore is a cool motherfucker, and I hope hanging out with him on these forums, some coolness will rub off on me.

:beer:

How scandalous !??!?!! I'm not sure I'm ready to know all this.

How could I forget? It was the summer of 69. Those were the best days of my life. *cough*

Trooo dat. I am dull and boring IRL. As Gwennie! I was fun and interesting.

One time when I visited NoDoubt.com there was an official notice on the home page that the member "gwen" on the forum there was really Gwen Stefani. I looked over there and found that she started posting there and no one believed her. Finally she said "I'm tired of being doubted." She only lasted about 20 posts and disappeared.

It was funny how naive about forums Gwen was and how she was so surprised to find out about pretendsters. At that point I had my Gwennie! character for over a year elsewhere. But, I never posted at NoDoubt.com's forum.

Thanks for showing that to me.

now wait a minute......what if just what if you really are gwen trying to assume rock's identity? :D

Oh yay, HP's really back now!!

Read the thread, followed the thread, re-read the thread...

It's clear to me that I'm still outside, not inside, new-guy, not written in the cellar's history books yet. I'm not complaining or being maudlin (shut off those damn violins!), but got a taste from this thread of the depth of the community here. Depths I have not plumbed.

I am excluded from those depths, not because I am shut out by anyone in this group, but because I have kept much about myself to myself. With respect to the start of this thread, all I have written about myself is true. But much more truth is unwritten.

I understand that there's a natural give and take in learning about one another. Give a little, get a little, etc. Not that there's anything natural about this forum. Well, not natural to my experience. An old fart like me has become accustomed to relying on inputs not present in this situation to help me form my opinion. Sight is one, voice, regularity of habits, etc. All these and more have analogues on this forum, an avatar, a way of writing, etc. But these don't map directly to my real life expectations. And, as this thread illustrates, they are easily counterfeited. Pseudonyms are not an internet phenomenon. For the record, I look very little like my avatar.

There are advantages too. In some ways this is a richer experience. I have explored the links of some member's homepages. I've seen images and read writings and tried to incorporate those pieces of the puzzle into the whole of my fellow cellar-mates. I also like the nature of the dialogue in written form. There's a certain deliberateness to it that rewards careful thought. It's not required, but it is nice to be able to savor something well written.

I don't know y'all in "real life". And except for the bounty hunters and crackerjack computer forensic pros in the group, you don't know me. *sigh* That's ok. I'm in my comfort zone, mostly. And I'm stretching it where it chafes.

Yes, I too ended a brief hiatus in order to cheer Ms. Brianna on through her difficulties. She's a very cool chick, isn't she?

Anyway, you've got some seriously big cajones admitting all this to Cellar members. Very impressive! :thumb:

Welcome to the Cellar! :biggrin:

garnet!


I was ready to quit the cellar for good and for true, until I was talked into coming back by someone very dear to me. I created another moniker so I could post relatively anonymously for awhile, but after 1 or 2 uses I felt cheap, and like a liar, and decided that if I was going to post, it was going to be as me, and fuck em if they don't like it.

Now here I am, firmly entrenched, laid bare to the world as OnyxCougar, and this is the real me. My naivete is thinking that all people are honest, even in this most anonymous of places. The truth seems to be that while some may be honest, more are not.

Live and learn.

hey garnet. go eat a cow, er something - yer too skinny.

Okay well I'm still and will probably be forever a noob. I will come clean as well....*deep breath* here goes.






















Nope can't do it..........

chicken

Maybe "have a cow" but not "eat a cow"...haha! :lol:

Naw, I wouldn't say I'm skinny. In my Cellar absence I've been spending some quality time at the gym. If I do say so myself, my triceps ands abs are looking quite lovely!

But don't worry, I'll try to keep the "dikey-ness" to a minimum!

That would be interesting, too.

:lol: That was great.

So, with your title, are you a No Doubt fan also?

No. i like their music but I don't stalk them....... JK :| ( for some reason my smilies are not working....)

;) is not the same as ; )

try removing the space between the semicolon and the parenthesis.

I look but don't touch, and don't flirt at work. But...

There are several beautiful young women at work that are No Doubt fans, and I get to talk with them a lot more because of this. It's not such a bad deal.

And I briefly met a new hire that was stunning. Recently, she closed an email reply to me saying that she heard I *loved* gwen stefani like she did. I wouldn't mind speaking with her the next time I'm in the office (about once a month).