User:PhirePhly

Who am I
Name: Kenneth Finnegan Age: 17 Gender: Male Location: Sunnyvale, CA, US

Now this profile is trying to be fairly complete as far as my life goes. Unfortunatly I've always been one to not bother remembering the past, so there's a lot of my past that is almost completely gone...

My Interests
Below is listed my four major interests in life. Other than these I often dip my toes into a huge pool of other interesting topics, usually very geeky and/or technical subjects, thus making Wikipedia invaluable to me.

Duct Tape
I got started in Duct Tape during the summer of 2004. I was sitting in my room messing around with a roll of grey when I realized that I could make a wallet out of it. After another 5 attempts I made one that was usable. I then went out and bought a few rolls of different colors of duct tape and then started making more interesting things ranging from roses to posters to even a few dresses. Over the years I've collected 26 different colors of duct tape and have in the range of 40 rolls on hand at any one time.

Computers
I spend most of my free time at home on my computer. I have dipped my toes into Linux but still remain a dedicated Windows user. I have Windows XP on my main desktop and Windows Vista on my laptop. I have Ubuntu Feisty Fawn running on my old desktop as a svn server. I use Pidgin for AIM, Y!M, MSN, and Google Talk. I also use Skype, but Pidgin lacks support for that, so alas I use the actual client for that.

I am a user and huge fan of Hamachi and use VNC within my VPN to administrate the computers on my network.

Games

I am a very casual gamer, never working on my 1337 but more just trying to enjoy beating the computer and enjoying the creative environment games have to offer. My favorite genre of game is RTS and noncompetitive games.

One example of a noncompetitive gamee is the Falling Sand Game, which is a game that completely lacks any sort of goal and is designed simply to create and destroy with the elements avaliable in the game. I have spent hours upon hours trying all different kinds of things with this game without any kind of goal in mind other than the ones that I set for myself.

My current interest is in the free game Battle for Wesnoth, which is a turn-based strategy game set in a fantasy environment. I have played it with some of my friends and other than it moving rather slowly, it's quite enjoyable.

Other outstanding games I have played:
 * Age of Empires series - AOE2 being my favorite. AOE3 is just too watered down for my taste.
 * The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - I was especially impressed by the fact that I usually can't stand RPGs due to gameplay disolving down to grinding to find a better sword or better armor, but this game is quest based enough and the monsters seem to scale to your character so I can just go where ever I want and do stuff.

Music
Music is a very large part of my life. I started music on the piano when I was around first grade. This taught me to read music but never really geled for me as an instrument. In second grade we had a career fair type thing where we went from classroom to classroom and each one had someone's parent in it with a demo of what they do for a living. One parent was a trumpet player and had several brass instruments around on the desks. I didn't get to play with any of the instruments there, but still feel in love with playing the trumpet. So for my birthday in 1997 I asked for and got a TR300 student Bach trumpet.

I got private lessons on trumpet from Liz for an unremembered amount of time before she had to move off to get her degree in something unrelated to music. I didn't have any noteable music experience until 6th grade when I became a member of the Cupertino Middle School Intermediate Band. The school wanted me to be in Beginning Band like all the other 6th graders, but that didn't make any sense at all seeing as how I both knew how to read music and knew how to play the trumpet. This was the last year Cupertino ever allowed this and I was one of two, the other person being Chelsea Maniscalco.

Music had its biggest impact during high school when I was part of the Marching Band and Winter Percussion. I was a section leader for both for two years. Trumpet in Marching Band and Marching Cymbals in Winter Percussion.

Trains
To call me a railfan would be somewhat inaccurate. I don't go out and chase trains and other than short trips (a few hours) can't stand to be cooped up inside a train. What I do enjoy doing is getting to work on trains. Doing anthing from electrical to engine work to cosmetic, I love getting down and dirty and getting stuff to work that didn't work before.

I volunteer at the Western Pacific Railroad Museum in Portola, CA. I first went there when I was two years old with my family after my dad saw a pamphlet for it talking about the Run a Locomotive program, where you get to learn how to drive a locomotive for an hour. After coming back a few more times my dad got plugged into the operating department and has worked his way up to now being a qualified passenger engineer and supervisor. Unfortunatly the operating department has a minimum age requirement of 16, so I was left out in the cold. To keep myself entertained I would do simple things like sweep out the shop and worked my way up from there. I was awarded membership into the mechanical department c. 2002 by the CMO Hank Stiles. I helped on various projects around the museum, but lacked the experience and skill required to find and resolve my own projects.

One of the largest projects I helped with was the restoration of the GP-30 849-X.

Why I'm Here
Who could resist editing Wikiepdia?