User:Donlammers

Stolen from Sven Manguard, who stole it from someone else...

Don't complain about it&mdash;fix it!

Say where you got it.

Whack a vandal.

"Where were you when JFK died?" led me to Syncom&mdash;incorrectly credited with the first trans-pacific television transmission from the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. But I had seen a 15 minute transmission from the United States to Japan 9 months before, early on November 23, 1963&mdash;a message to the Japanese people that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. I found the correct satellite&mdash;Relay 1 (and even the orbit numbers). These were my first edits&mdash;communications satellites, John F. Kennedy assassination articles, and the 1964 Summer Olympics.

My son's interest in animals led me to red panda. Denver Zoo, which had just had quadruplets (and triplets the year before) was not listed, but another with triplets was. I pushed red panda to GA, but that led first to captive breeding, Arabian oryx, Phoenix Zoo, and Arabian oryx reintroduction (my first new article). The IUCN classification for the red panda was incorrect or missing in many languages, so I started fixing these. In September 2009 I posted my first pictures (of the Denver Zoo). On October 19, 2009 I posted my first map (of the Denver Zoo).

I was born in Sendai, Japan, and lived in Japan through my high school years at the American School in Japan in Tokyo. I was in Japan during the 1964 Summer Olympics, but was only a kid and had no idea what it meant to Japan&mdash;truly its coming out party after World War II&mdash;until I expanded the article on Wikipedia 45 years later.

In 2013 I took a break. I was spending all my time keeping up with issues in my watchlist. This was not why I started editing. I wanted to expand articles, not just fix vandalism and style issues. In late 2013 I started again working on articles about places that mattered to me—The Sony Building (an oasis in a noisy city where I would go to listen to the bamboo pipe organ), the Imperial Hotel (our prom was the last "formal" event in the Frank Lloyd Wright Peacock Room). I can't cite my memories, but I can improve the articles. I've realized I had no idea how Tokyo was really laid out—my "map" was a subway diagram—and I'm learning a lot from Google Earth and Wikimapia. Hopefully I can continue contributing in the way I want, and in a way that helps Wikipedia.

Some early edits of mine were done as 72.42.76.8. My son did a few edits under that IP address starting when he was 9, and now has his own login. "Proud" is an understatement.