User:Cynthisa

I, Cynthisa, have been a member of Wikipedia at varying levels of intensity (mostly a casual typo-fixer) for about over a decade now (wow!) While living in Southern California, I participated in several Wikipedia IRL events. There are SO many great events held in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas, I truly miss that. But I am now happily ensconced now in central Oklahoma, of all places. After nearly 50 years spent in So Cal, I never would’ve expected to wind up here in the Midwest. But, I must say, I really don't miss the traffic, crowds, pollution and crime. I DO miss the restaurants, the culture, the multi-ethnic neighborhoods and the sunsets. Stillwater is a college town though, and it’s really neat to see the energy that a vibrant and vigorous college culture brings to a place. Maybe it's an L.A. thing—so many opportunities for entertainment and engagement—but I just never saw there the kind of intense school pride in California that OSU garners here. (On game day during homecoming weekend, NO ONE leaves their home wearing anything BUT orange! It just IS—luckily I like orange!) [Editor’s note: I wrote this before 2016. Orange is kinda ruined for me now.... Enough said.]

So, about me: I'm a polymath who at various times in my life have done all of the following: electronics assembler, aerobics instructor, nuclear physicist, wedding photographer, wildlife biologist, technical writer, urban planner, medical assistant, script supervisor, biomedical illustrator, personal assistant (to Jack Lalane's partner, Win Paris), chemistry instructor, chauffeur, music teacher (clarinet) and sign language interpreter. I have credits in both IMDb and Medline, and published my first peer-reviewed article as an undergrad at California State University, Long Beach. I graduated from CSULB in 1996 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Zoology/Terrestrial Biology with a minor in Chemistry. I like beaches, but love big cities. San Francisco, California, Florence, Italy, and Istanbul, Turkey, are tied as my favorites. (I have yet to see Paris or London, but hope to someday.) At present I am loving road tripping through the Midwest (so many yummy roadside diners! so many new wheat fields!) I'll read almost anything, but prefer science fiction (big shock, right?) I am happily married and the proud parent of three cats (another big shock). All rescues. I suspect my husband is planning an intervention to pry my iPad away from me...possibly while I sleep. Chances of success are slim.

Haven't updated my User Boxes in a while. Current interests include:

Perennial interests include:

Copyeditig for fun and, er, free
A technical writer by trade, not degree, my syntax and grammar preferences tend to be idiosyncratic (hate the Oxford comma! love the % symbol!), though backed by a well-developed sense for grammatical spoken English. This skill has been warped, however, by roughly nineteen (19) years spent writing for various government agencies. It has also engendered in me a profound hatred for Excessive Capialization of Regular Nouns (ECRN) and a regretable fondness for excessive wordiness and acronyms (EWAA). Also, a propensity for writing in the passive voice is deeply ingrained.

Nevertheless, I adore copyediting in Wikipedia, particularly sprucing up articles in which English may not have been the author's native language. To improve my formal copyediting skills and be a part of all the fun, I have joined the Guild of Copyeditors. Yay! And am trying to get a decent grasp of the Wiki markup language and protocols. So, here is my first attempt at adding userboxes (aiyee! wish me luck!).

Languages
This user also studied Mandarin Chinese, but it was so long ago she can no longer claim any proficiency whatsoever. Also, she knows enough Icelandic and Turkish (all the practical languages, eh?) to negotiate in the bazaars, but that's about it.

This user also studied Mandarin Chinese, but it was so long ago she can no longer claim any proficiency whatsoever. Also, she knows enough Icelandic and Turkish (all the practical languages, eh?) to negotiate in the bazaars, but that's about it.

As to coding and programming, this user is definitely not a programmer and finds the ubiquitous code-talk used in the Wikipedia community quite problemmatic. (See my proto-essay, My Newby Screed, under my Talk page).

Grammar preferences
Note: These are only my personal preferences.  I absolutely respect others' preferences and respect them in any copyediting I might do outside my own stylistic preferences or the Wikipedia MoS. And, I am trying to suppress them in favor of the Wiki MoS as much as I can. (Except when it comes to Oxford commas -- hate 'em!)   (Still trying to adjust to sentence case headers -- looked strange at first but are now starting to grow on me!)

Personal settings and preferences
Please forgive all the typos -- Steve Jobs' ghost haunts my iPad! My first hard drive was a cassette tape recorder.