Last week I asked for regular visitors of my site to volunteer for a few questions so that we could all find out a little bit more about the people stopping by. Below are the questions and all of their answers (completely unedited). I’ve also added in my own 2 cents where I had something to say.
- Where are you from and where do you live now?
- Jere: I am from Rogers City and I currently live in Sterling Heights
- Matt: I’m from Houston and I live in Houston.
- Paul: I currently live in Burlington, Vermont. I was born in Hartford, CT, but have lived in PA, MA, NM, CA and MD.
- Bill: I’m from all around the USA, such is the life of a military brat. I was born in Seattle (WA), moved to Buffalo (NY) at age .8, moved to Long Island (NY) at age five, moved to Honolulu (HI) at age nine, moved to Tacoma (WA) at age twelve. Somewhere in there I lived in Raleigh (NC) with my grandparents for a year. Currently I live in Redmond (WA).
- Lane: I live in Michigan; I’ve been living here for the better part of my life time.
- Brit: I am from the big town of Rogers City
- Me: I was born in Rogers City, MI and now live and now live in Saginaw, MI.
- Are you in school or do you work? Where? What are your plans for the future?
- Jere: I graduated from CMU in May 04 and currently am working for a landscaping company for another few weeks until I start my teaching position at the end of August
- Matt: Both. I study poli sci at the University of Houston and I do contract work in Perl and PHP all over.
- Paul: I graduated from UMass-Amherst with a BS in Sports Management. I currently create and execute programming and events for Tubbs Snowshoe Company in Stowe, VT. My job is to increase awareness of the category and to promote access and trial. In the future I hope to further my career in event management and sport marketing.
- Bill: I currently work full-time and go to school part-time. I’ve worked full-time since I was seventeen years old, and jobs have included: making pizza, lower-level management, unloading parcel trucks, ‘contract’ work, furniture assembly (IKEA), drafting, and mindless office work (just like ‘Office Space’). I have attended five colleges in pursuit of various degrees, but get fed up with most courses about two years into the program. Sadly, I have no real definitive plans for the future.
- Lane: I work for myself doing graphic design and photography. Also, I’m developing Web projects, or I should say I have some ideas for some and looking for the right people to hook up with to maybe further develop those ideas. I’m a creative person, and while I can work with code and understand the most rudimentary stuff, I don’t like trying to do
something that takes away from my creative time.
- Brit: I am almost done with high school, just one more year:) I go to school at Rogers City High School and I plan to go to college and major in Psychology and minor in either music or interior design
- Me: I graduated from SVSU and now work here as a Help Desk Analyst.
- If you could only tell someone one thing about yourself, what would it be?
- Jere:
That is a tough question because I hate talking myself up or telling people about myself. I dont want to come off like I am arrogant. Plus telling somebody only one thing is hard because if they dont like what they hear they will run for the hills!
- Matt: I like creating things.
- Paul: I won the Vermont state high school table tennis championship two years in a row.
- Bill: If I could only tell someone one thing about myself I’d tell them that my name is bill.
- Lane: I want to move people.
- Brit: I talk a lot
- Me: I love Bill’s answer. It’s too bad more people don’t think this way. I’d like to be able to come up with that type of answer.
- Jere:
- What does your normal week consist of?
- Jere: Right now my normal week consists of a lot of work and no time for play and it sucks! I normally would work and have time to go out and just chill out.
- Matt: I’ll tell you when I have a normal week.
- Paul: Because I work for a winter sports company, my summer and my winter schedules differ considerably. In the summer I work 4 1/2 days a week planning for the winter. For 3-4 months in the winter I work almost 7 days a week and travel all over the country and throughout Canada. In my time away from the office (these days) I play poker, sit by the pool when the weather allows, hang out with my girl, ride my motorcycle, drink beer (usually by the pool), go to live music, and burn a lot of propane cooking up good meat. I’m also a big fan of a certain illegal plant. During the winter I try to enjoy the season as much as I can by snowshoeing and skiing.
- Bill: My normal week is: Work Monday-Friday 8 – 5 (pacific). Homework after-hours and on weekends. Far too much X-Box, GameCube, and PS2 when I should be doing homework. Quality time with my girlfriend happens whenever we’re both home, which isn’t often enough. If it’s nice out I like to ride my mountain bike all around Redmond and try to find things to take (bad) pictures of.
- Lane: Work..
- Brit: Well this month its been pageant this and that everyday but usually just hanging out…helping around the house..nothing too exciting
- Me: Mostly work, biking, golfing, playing poker, and surfing the web.
- Do you have any sites? What are they?
- Jere: No
- Matt: A few. 🙂 The big ones are
- Paul: At this point I don’t have any sites. But I’m working on a poker related business idea and am hoping to contract a site in the future.
- Bill: My sites are: sociallyretarded.net , marla.ws , and assorted “sites” I’ve had to design for school. I occasionally help out or post at: godsperformanceart.com/blog , theabsurdity.com , and a few other places.
- Lane: http://stimulilab.com
- Brit: nope
- Me: https://nickmomrik.wordpress.com/ is my main site. I have a few other domains, but not are really being used yet. Stay tuned for more info.
- How did we meet or how did you come across my site?
- Jere: We met a long time ago since we are cousins and I came across your site when I was up at your place and you were showing me what you have been working on and I have been coming to it almost daily since!
- Matt: Your work with WordPress.
- Paul: I did a search for ‘guide to making love to my wife’ and your site popped up. Just kidding… chip tricks.
- Bill: I found your site through your profile in the wordpress support forums. You answered a few questions, and seemed generally intelligent so I wanted to see if you had a blog.
- Lane: I saw some of your work on the WordPress site and started reading your site because it was interesting that you were pretty close to where I am from.
- Brit: I am dating your little brother and I came across your site by him telling me about it
- MtDewVirus is my source of creativity. What do you do for creativity? Paint, write poetry, arts and crafts?
- Jere: I like write down things going on in my life….kind of a way for me to vent and not have to direct towards any one person. I have been doing this for a couple of years and it seems to help me from blowing up! That is about the most creative thing that I do, but it is something I only do for myself, I dont share that with anyone.
- Matt: I try to draw inspiration from everywhere. A lot comes from music and art, particularly photography.
- Paul: I really don’t consider myself a creative type. For the most part I’d categorize myself as a numbers guy. But I do have a lot of creative avenues through my job. I create collateral and merchandise for all of my events and programs. I’ve also created entire events and come up with some clever ideas/rules. I also do some fun promotions for my weekly poker game (prizes, games, contests, etc) to keep people coming back.
- Bill: I write a lot more than anyone knows. I used to paint (oil), but haven’t “found the time” lately. I play guitar (poorly) when the mood is right.
- Lane: My creativity is my work. 🙂 Some drawing, some writing, wanting to do more metal sculpture work, a lot of photography and graphic design. I’m doing some video work as well.
- Brit: I like to write and draw and I like to be alone a lot to think about certain things
- How long have you been visiting MtDewVirus and how often do you stop by?
- Jere: I think I have been visiting it since you started the site.
- Matt: Not sure how long, I stop by every couple of days.
- Paul: I guess I first came across your site around March-ish. I usually check in once a day at least, sometimes more.
- Bill: I’ve been visiting your site since about a month before I gave you the GMail so I’d say three months or so. I visit about once a day Mon-Fri.
- Lane: Hmm, I’ve starting stopping by for about three months… stop by two or three times a week.
- Brit: I have been visiting your site for lets see…about 8 months and I check it at least once or twice a day to see if you did anything exciting that day that you may have posted
- What keeps you coming back?
- Jere: I like to see what is new in your world…haha I like to see what types of things you are posting and looking to see other people’s opinions on the things you are talking about.
- Matt: The soft, chewy center.
- Paul: This is my favorite question, because I don’t really know the answer. I’m looking forward to seeing what other people have to say. Before I first visited your site, I had no idea what a blog was or that people were doing this kind of thing. Since then, for some reason, I’ve become interested in following what you do. It’s not even like you’re a super cool spy with special toys and crazy missions (no offense meant here), you’re just an ordinary guy doing ordinary things (again, no offense). But for some reason, I’ve become addicted to keeping up with what you’re up to. I guess it goes back to our increasingly voyeuristic nature.
- Bill: I come back because we seem to share a few common interests, so you sometimes clue me in to things that I’d have missed otherwise.
- Lane: Interested in seeing what programmers are doing in my area.
- Brit: The wide variety of things that you talk about
- Me: I was beginning to wonder if anyone found the soft, chewy center. Nice find Matt! 🙂
- Is there anything you’d like to see more or less of on the site? What? Why?
- Jere: I would like to just see the same things. I would like to see some more posts a little more often, but I know it is hard to have posts all the time…hard to have something creative everyday.
- Matt: Seems to be doing fine to me.
- Paul: Personally, I’m not really into video games and/or gaming and/or science fiction stuff. But you really don’t deal with that too often. Also, a lot of the computer talk is gibberish to me. But that’s what you do, so I’m not expecting that to change. What I’d like to see is a question/answer section where people like me could get some computer help. You know, ask some pretty basic questions about hardware or mainstream software and have the answers posted. Like when you listed the shortcuts in Explorer (or maybe it was Windows?) Basic hints more than “fix my computer”. Also, how about you organize a fake money game on UB with all of your poker playing visitors and give away a prize or something to the winner(s).
- Bill: I think all ‘blogs’ are perfect how they are. If people start trying to pander to an audience it changes the blog. So, no I think mtdewvirus.com is great as-is.
- Lane: More PHP programming.
- Brit: I would like to see more posts because I sometimes get mad when i go to it and theres nothing new there
- Me: I’ll take some of these into consideration when I return to a normal updating schedule after this week. Maybe I’ll implement some type of forums.
- What are your favorite and least favorite parts of MtDewVirus?
- Jere: I really like the movie and book reviews that you do. That helps me out when thinking about movies because most of the time we agree on that…EXCEPT FOR MATRIX Movies!!! haha I like checking on the posts and seeing what others think. I dont really think I have a least favorite part….I like everything about your site.
- Matt: I’m not crazy about the look of the menu, and it needs more comprehensive IA. Find out why people come to your site (watch stats) and make those areas easy to access from anywhere. Add some leading to the main site text, too.
- Paul: Favorite is the chip tricks (although for some reason my QuickTime won’t let me see the videos… that is keeping me from getting the twirl down). Least favorite are the ‘computer wizard’ posts that seem like a different language to me.
- Bill: I like everything except the fact that I can’t find the RSS feed link (I guess I could guess if it’s one of the default WP RSS locations).
- Lane: Least favorite is the design, but thats only because I like getting away from the norm. Favorite parts are stuff about programming, since it helps me.
- Brit: My favorite part is that I personally know the person who’s doing all this and my least favorite part is how you always talk about Isaac and you being around each other but you don’t mention me…psh…we are connected at the hip it feels like sometimes…I see how I rate:P…jk
- Me: Not sure what Matt menas by IA. I’m not a big fan of some of the design. I’d like to have some rounded edges, but didn’t have the time when I created this design. It works for now, but as always, it’s a work in progress.
So there you have it. These are some of the regular MtDewVirus readers. Thanks to everyone who volunteered their time!
Nick Momrik 
Hmm, I live in IA but I don’t think Matt was talking about Iowa.
If I were to hazard a serious guess, I’d say he’s talking about Information Architecture.
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