What am I like, what do I like, and what kind of a person am I? These and other burning questions I hope to answer for you here. But first, something to howl at. ;-)
Isn't she beautiful? :-) If that picture doesn't make you wanna howl, you're probably human. :-P
Following is a little information about me. Hey, I'm not going tell you everything, okay?
Among some of the things that I'm most well known for are my writings, photography and web page designs.
Writings: You can find a few of my short stories here, and I've also written other things, but most I tend not to share with the rest of the world, or I write them under another name.
Photography: Some of my pictures I've included on my pages for the general public to view. Others, I keep private. I take pictures of sunsets, storms, historical buildings, fountains, monuments, people, weddings, animals, parties, parades and other city events, et cetera. If you want to hire me to take some pictures for you, you'll be comforted by the fact that I don't charge much for my services.
Web pages: You're looking at one. ;-) I used to have a set of framed pages, along with my non-framed pages, but I removed them once I was able to produce them easily. Now, I use things like Flash buttons and CSS. And I also have a very small Web design business named GrokWeb, which charges a heck of a lot less for Web design work than almost everybody else. LOL But, my latest experiments in HTML can't be seen correctly in crappy browsers, even though I'm using things that have been standardized since 1996, so I recommend good Web browers like the free Mozilla Web brower.
Yes, I'm also the Grok Wolf that has his name inscribed on the Stardust spacecraft, part of which returned to Earth on January 15th, 2006 after its seven year mission to the comet Wild 2. When it completed its mission and dropped off the sample return capsule to Earth, the Stardust spacecraft remained in space, and it will carry my name on it forever.
My name is also on the Mars Exploration Rover Mission. In both the Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. DVDs with my name on them are now at Meridiani Planum in the Opportunity rover, and at Gusev Crater in the Spirit rover. NASA was kind enough to also put a certificate on the Web for me, and you can see it here.
You can also find my name on New Horizons spacecraft, that launched on January 19th, 2006 and headed for Pluto, its moon, Charon, and the Kuiper Belt. Also on board are some of Clyde Tombaugh's ashes. For those of you who don't know who he is, he's the astronomer who discovered Pluto in 1930. He was born in Illinois in 1906. Not being satisfied with the quality of a store-bought telescope, he made his own. On February 18, 1930, he discovered the planet Pluto while at the Lowell Observatory (Percival Lowell predicted that a planet would be found beyond Neptune) in Flagstaff, Arizona. He died on January 17, 1997, at the age of 90.
An interesting side note about Pluto: The name Pluto was suggested by an 11 year old girl named Venetia Burney from Oxford, England, for the Roman god of the underworld (his Greek name was Hades or Polydectes). Her great-uncle was Henry Madan (1838–1901). He was the guy who suggested that Mars' moons be named Phobos and Deimos.
So, I'm certifiably spacey. ;-) But, some would just say certifiable...
Guess I'm really crazy if Alice Cooper thinks I'm nuts. LOL
For those who think I'm the anti-christ I'm not. I realize that the number 666 keeps coming up in my life, and that the Illinois lottery daily game even had it come up on my birthday, once, but I'm sure it's just a coincidence. Besides, wouldn't the anti-christ be in politics or be some really rich guy? Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm neither a politician or rich. :-P
I'm not the Internet boogeyman, either. I guess while the regular boogeyman would be like a monster that growls in your closet or lives under your bed, the Internet boogeyman would be living on the Internet. ;-)
I read and collect comic books (okay., so I refuse to 'grow up', so what? It's a lot more fun having a kid's attitude towards 'life'). Mostly the X-titles (Wolverine, Excalibur (They've canceled the comic, but I think I have every issue. I really miss Rachel Summers. Not only because she liked to dress in tight spandex (she looked very yummy!), but also because she seemed to be fairly intelligent female character), X-Men, X-Factor, X-Force, Uncanny X-Men, X-Man, et cetera), but some others like Gen-13 and Deadpool (he actually made a reference to Alice Cooper in one of his comics! Whoo-hoo!) as well. BTW, for those interested, I read in the letters section (called X-Pressions in this title) of issue #86 of X-Men dated March, 1999, that since the X-Men have been published back in 1963 (a little before my time, but I wouldn't mind having the first issue), only about seven years have passed for them in their lives.
Favorite authors: Robert A. Heinlein (or RAH to some sci-fi fans), Larry Niven, Christopher Stasheff, Wilson Tucker, Roger Zelazny, Steven Brust, Murray Leinster, Marion Zimmer Bradley (also known as MZB. I mostly like her Darkover series), and Neal Stephenson. When I was a little kid, the only place I could find to escape was into sci-fi books, and these, along with lots of other authors (I've read literally thousands of sci-fi stories) opened up whole universes to me. I poured as much of my conscious mind into the stories that I could (hey, I was just a kid. I didn't know that I wasn't supposed to do that. I think most of me is still out there, somewhere. I'm not sure if it's safe to come back yet, so I'll probably be there forever) but for some reason, I couldn't put all of me into them as I seemed to still be here when I looked up from the book and that saddened me. But I tried to deal with that major letdown as well as I could and eventually became the reality-challenged space cadet that I am today. ;-)
I enjoy listening to it the most when I have a few beers in me and I'm in a place with a nice view (like on an enclosed front porch looking out on a busy street) and a stereo system with large speakers, capable of producing some good, deep, bass a few feet away on either side of me (think of the ten and two positions on a wall-mounted chronometer. Or, if you prefer, a clock) and a subwoofer under my comfy chair with the stereo cranked up so high I can feel the bass throbbing through my body. It feels so good! :-) I once created my own home-made speakers with 15 inch woofers in them, but currently, I don't have anything like that, nor do I have a front porch to drink on. Someday, I hope to be able to do that, again. After all, it's cheaper to drink at home, and safer, too, since there's no risk of DUI. ;-)
Some of my favorite songs (these aren't in any real order that I'm aware of except maybe the first few. The song titles are in white, artist and group names are in blue and album and movie names are in green. Kinda makes things easier to find this way):
Veteran of the Psychic Wars (this is probably my favorite song by anyone, not because of the way it sounds, but because the lyrics strike a chord with me) by Blue Oyster Cult off of the Heavy Metal movie soundtrack album, Sanctuary by Alice Cooper off of his Brutal Planet album, Is Anyone Home by Alice Cooper off of his album A Fistful of Alice (the song is so close to how I feel it's bizarre!!!), Some guys have all the luck by Robert Palmer off of his Addictions volume 1 album (I love the lyrics! Oh, yeah!), I know there's something going on (Loved the music (I think Phil Collins might've played the drums in this one) and her voice mostly) by Frida off of The big 80's (supposedly volume 1) put out by VH-1, Cherry Pie by Warrant off of their Cherry Pie album, Shout it out by Slaughter, Battle stations by Winger, Drinking Again by Neverland, off of the Bill & Ted's bogus journey movie soundtrack album, Gimme the prize (Kurgan's theme) by Queen off of their A kind of magic album (I think that this might be the closest thing to a soundtrack album for the Highlander movie (the original one, which also happens to be one of my favorite movies from the 1980's) ), Hell is for children by Pat Benatar (don't ask why I like it. You won't like the answer. Has to do with my childhood. Enough said?), Escape off of the Welcome to My Nightmare album, and Wind up toy off of the Hey stoopid album by Alice Cooper, et cetera. I'll probably add more later if I think about it.
Some of my favorite groups: Alice Cooper, Jello Biafra (technically, not music, but does a lot of interesting 'spoken word' albums) KISS, Twisted Sister, Queen, Big Pig (no guitars, mostly great sounding drums and female vocals. If you've seen the movie Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and could hear the music in it, you've already heard one of their songs. It was I Can't Break Away (off of their Bonk album) and I think it was playing while the big gold thing that became a phone booth which was actually a time machine was coming down from the ceiling), Def Leppard, et cetera. Okay, so it's mostly '80s music, but so what? To me, it sounds a lot better than most of the stuff they're playing on the radio now that doesn't even sound that original and it doesn't make me feel anything (unlike the music I've already mentioned) or the dance music/hip-hop/(c)rap music or whatever they're calling it that the d.j.s play in the bars. Yuck!!! BTW, I think it's sad that music artists have to do 'cover' songs (re-doing old songs by other artists) to make a living. I'm sorry that they can't get by with their own song writing ability, but since most of the songs that they re-do sound terrible when compared to the original, I think they should stick with their own material. I heard that some group even re-did one of Alice Cooper's songs for a movie soundtrack. I didn't bother going to see the movie after I heard that. It just seems a little too close to stealing to me. :-(
Hmm... all that should give you some idea of what I'm like. If you're curious to learn even more about me, you can do it while reading some of my other pages, and especially my stories.
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