Blaugust Introduction – Blaugust 1

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Today is the first day of Blaugust. I thought I would start by introducing myself, something I probably should have done a long time ago.

Hi! I’m a middle-aged guy who lives alone in a somewhat rural-ish house with a dog and a cat. I’m “in my 40s,” though in truth I’m now a lot closer to 50 than I would care to admit. I was married for a time, but now I’m divorced. I don’t have any kids. I’m an INTP and/or an INFP depending on my mood when I take that test.

I always list my occupation as “software developer.” .NET application and web development has been my specialty over the last ten years, but before that I wrote Amiga software, and my knowledge base actually goes all the way back to around 1985 and 6809 assembly language programming on a TRS-80 Color Computer.

I’m currently unemployed, because I quit my last job in 2017. I’m taking a sabbatical while I figure out how to make a living for the rest of my life (I can’t “retire” for eighteen more years). I don’t particularly want to go back to working for someone else. If anyone has any great business ideas, let me know. :)

I have a wide variety of hobbies and interests, including reading, writing, music, and art (ie. most everything). I consider myself a “creative person” before anything else, which if I can get on a soap box for a moment, makes life difficult because modern society is not built for creative people.

I’ve had issues with social anxiety since my 20s. It’s an ongoing problem that comes and goes. I was taking antidepressants for a long time but I stopped last year for various reasons. Currently I think I’m managing okay but every day is different.

I’ve been playing computer games pretty much since computer games were invented. I started “gaming” when my older brothers introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons around 1979. I graduated to an Atari 2600, then a TRS-80 Color Computer, then an Amiga. I moved to DOS/Windows/PC Gaming when Doom and Quake made all other computer platforms obsolete.

I can trace my origins in writing “blog posts” back to around 1997, when I posted “match summaries” on a Quake clan web site. I’ve maintained one or more of my own web sites since 1998. My first semi-regular blogging, in the format that we know today, began around 2003 on my real name web site, using a PHP blog platform that I wrote myself. I wrote about politics and current events until around 2010 when I got bored with that.

I launched Endgame Viable in October 2013 because I wanted to put game-related content on its own site, and I wanted to switch to WordPress and stop maintaining my dumb PHP thing. (Actually I started in 2012 but I renamed the site in 2013.)

I write here under the name “UltrViolet” because it was the only name I could think of when I started. It’s the name I used in Quake, playing in the Crayola Clan. I’ve been trying to think of a different name to use for years now, a subject that itself could probably fill several more blog posts.

That’s enough for now. It’s hard to fit a lot of information into a short post! I have also learned that writing about myself in a blog post makes me very anxious hehe. That’s probably why I don’t do it very much.

P. S. The followup visit to the doctor this morning confirmed I have high blood pressure, so I will be starting some meds for that. Of more interest to the topic of gaming, I got a referral to see a hand specialist as well.