Hello, my name is Spanner. Actually I'm far better known on the Internet by my real name, Aaron Ziegler, but I thought it was about time that I got myself a handle. Not that I'm terribly likely to use it outside of this homepage, but what the heck.
I recently made a major change to my homepage, the largest in quite a while - at least a year, I think - and much has changed. For one thing, I'm no longer a college student. I graduated from St. John's University back in the Spring of 1997. I'm now gainfully employed, and making my own living as a happy bachelor! Ah, the nirvana of evenings free of homework, and the delights of dinners of Pizza Rolls and orange juice... If this isn't bliss, it's not far from it.
My appearance, too, has changed from the shaggy college boy I once was. Behold my glory!
Hmm, that didn't seem to work. Let me try again:
Ah, I think I've found the problem. I don't HAVE a contemporary picture of myself handy, at the moment! Well, please humbly accept this picture of Nanami Jinnai:
She looks nothing like me, and is the wrong gender besides, but she is cute!
I've changed, my situation has changed, and my homepage has changed, and looks as though it is going to keep on changing. To help you keep up with all these changes, I've decided to add, for the very first time, an Updates page, to help you keep track of what I've been doing here. Oh, yeah, and here's a link to the page of my Dark Id, as well.
Anyway, on to my interests:
I spent a good chunk of my college life building up an interest in Japanese Animation. But it wasn't until I started receiving a steady paycheck that I realized that I had become an anime fanatic. By now, my siblings and I have collected an absurd number of tapes. I've enjoyed too many series and one-shots to go into them all (translation: I'm too lazy to go into them all), but here's a couple of my favorites:
A bit of info on the zany Martial Arts Comedy known as Ranma ½.
Visit Ifurita and Ifurita's Dual El-Hazard Web Site, my own tribute to an underappreciated anime!
A brief description of the many incarnations of Tenchi Muyo, the story of an ordinary boy and the many alien girls who live with him.
Meet Lina Inverse, master sorceress, in one of the most hilarious fantasy settings I've seen.
Okay, so it's not technically an anime. It IS, however, one of the best American made animated series to date.
While browsing the Internet, I stumbled across a cute little project called Pocket Bishoujo, as well as it's brother site Pocket Bishonen. Basically, they offered a way to "collect" your favorite anime characters like you would Pokemon. Check out my Bishodex to see what I've caught!
I've always considered myself a decent writer, but it wasn't until I learned about fanfiction that I really learned to ENJOY writing.
Fanfiction, in case you don't know, is fiction written by fans, stories written in the setting of a TV series, or movie, or novel, or any other commercially available source. If you can name a fictional setting that's reasonably popular, chances are that you can find a story that someone has written using that setting. Authors of fanfiction can try to create a story that fits seamlessly into the setting they've chosen, or they can take the story in a whole new direction, a direction, perhaps, that would NEVER be taken otherwise. Entire industries of fanfiction exist - all the many, many books published that take place in the Star Trek universe, or the stories that have been written for the Man-Kzin Wars, originally conceived by popular Sci-Fi author Larry Niven. On the Internet, thousands of stories exist for the anime "Ranma ½" alone. Four of them are mine. :)
It was through fanfiction that I came to know "Ranma ½", and it was through stories that crossed "Ranma ½" with other animes that I found interest in those other animes. "Tenchi Muyo", "Bubblegum Crisis", "Slayers" - all of these I learned of through "Ranma ½" crossovers.
After I had been reading fanfiction for a while, I decided to give it a try of my own. It was a lot of fun, and so it became one of my primary hobbies. You can read some of what I've written, here. It's mostly "Ranma ½" and "Gargoyles" fanfiction now, but I have a whole host of other projects in the works (most of which are giving me rather severe writer's block *sigh*). There's also one "Magic: The Gathering" story.
Towards the end of my Senior year of college, I became aware of a project in the works by Gargoyles fandom. The project was called TGS, or "The Gargoyles Saga", and it was an effort to continue the TV series where it had been cut off when Disney ceased producing it. To continue it in fanfiction form. It sounded like fun, and so I signed up. Fun it was, but also HARD work, and work that monopolized a lot of my time and creativity. However, the result, in my opinion, is well worth it. If you're a Gargoyles fan, and were annoyed by "The Goliath Chronicles" (the rather poorly done third season of Gargoyles), take a look. You'll be glad you did.
I love computer games. My dad brought home our family's first PC when I was six years old, and I quickly fell in love with the cute little BASIC games that came with it. Today, the computers I use are much more powerful (heck, my graphing calculator probably has more power than that old 8088 PC), and the games are much more complex, and my love for them has grown accordingly.
I.e., games played on a console system, rather than a PC. I've been playing video games for as long as I have computer games. My first video game system was the Atari 2600, a console that provided me with years of enjoyment before finally being stored away in favor of a Nintendo Entertainment System. Since then, our family has owned Game Boys, a Super Nintendo, a Sega Genesis, a Nintendo 64, and most recently, a Playstation. Sadly, the most recent advances in three dimensional gaming have, in my opinion, taken some of the fun out of the games. The many controls necessary for manipulating a character in a three dimensional environment are manageable, but overly complex. I've frequently found myself missing the side-scrolling games more common to systems like the NES and SNES. Perhaps that is why I'm drawn to games like Mischief Makers and Einhänder. Though, 3-D or no 3-D, I have to admit that Zelda 64 is pretty incredible. Here are a few of my favorite games:
A couple of years ago, I found yet another expensive addiction: Magic: The Gathering. Up to that point, I'd never been into trading cards. I like to collect things, but once you've collected a set of trading cards, there really isn't much you can do with them. You can look at them, but that gets old pretty fast. But with Magic, you could collect cards, and then play a rather interesting (if extremely complex) game with them. The bigger your collection, the greater the variety your games could possess. For several years, I spent dreadful amounts of money on Magic, and obtained a pretty respectable collection. I even wrote a solitary fanfic based on the game - my first fanfic ever on any topic.
But, as time passed, I began to get frustrated. New expansions for the game were coming out at a rate far greater than I had any hope of keeping up with (at least, considering my budget at the time), and my siblings (the ones I played the game with the most) had become tired of playing Magic with me. So, I packed my cards in a box, and put them away.
After that, I never suspected that CCG fever would hit me again. As time passed, however, I became aware of two additional Collectable Card Games, one of which grabbed me by my love of Anime, and the other by my love of video games (or, rather, my love of one, specific video game). The former, Ani-Mayhem, I quickly grew tired of, as it is a cumbersome and tedious game to play, and the rules are difficult to follow. The latter was Pokémon, and it kept my attention for much longer, but it, too, passed in time. Still, I enjoyed them all while my interest lasted!
I am a proud employee of United Defense, LP, a contracting company that builds certain types of armament and equipment for the Army and Navy. United Defense is primarily known for the manufacture of guns and missile launchers for the decks of Navy ships, though they also produce a few types of personnel carriers for the Army. The project that I work on has nothing to do with either of these. United Defense won the contract to build the prototype of the Crusader Self-Propelled Howitzer, the latest in a long line of mobile artillery units, and one with some pretty impressive capabilities. The Crusader unit actually consists of two vehicles: the Self-Propelled Howitzer (SPH), which is the vehicle that can actually fire shells, and the ReSupply Vehicle (RSV), which carries a large supply of shells to enable the SPH to stay in the field much longer.
So what do I do? I'm helping to develop a computer simulator that soldiers will be able to use to train themselves in the use of the actual vehicle. Most of the work that I do involves creating the virtual control panels and monitors and stuff that allow soldiers to control the simulated vehicle, as well as the computer code necessary to drive those simulated controls. I've also done some work in creating the terrains and models used in the simulator.
All in all, it's enjoyable work-much like creating a big, incredibly detailed video game (though higher-ups in the company frown on referring to it that way). It's my dream, one day, to work for a company that makes video games - and to design video games of my own. While I have no plans on leaving United Defense for a good, long while, the work I'm doing now is good practice for that.
I always end my pages with a few words about my family. I consider myself very fortunate to have a family as close and loving as mine. My mom and dad have always been there for me, and my brother and sister have always been among my closest friends. I live apart from them, now, but I do live close enough for me to them to visit often, and so I do.
My dad's name is Lynn, and he teaches classes in Computer Science at St. John's University, Minnesota, the same college that I graduated from. Thanks to Dad, there's always been a computer or two around the house, allowing me to become computer literate at a relatively early age. A fanatic of science fiction, Dad encouraged everyone in our family to develop an interest in reading - something that has served us well.
Mom's name is Carol, and she's a registered nurse at St. Cloud Hospital. She's always been kind, and loving, and tolerant. If it wasn't for her influence, I probably never would have taken up any interest in music. Today, I still prefer computers and stuff over music, but I greatly value the fact that I can sing well, play the trombone tolerably, plunk out a few tunes on the piano, and read music.
My brother, four years my junior. He shares many of my interests - particularly a love for Anime and electronic games - but in addition to that, has a devotion to music that I was never quite able to acquire for myself. He attends St. Olaf College, Minnesota, where he studies music, computers, and Japanese (the latter, I suspect, flowed from his interest in Anime), and greatly enjoyed his semester abroad in Japan during his Junior year.
My sister, eight years my junior. In spite of the fact that she's so much younger than I am, I have at least as much in common with her as I do with my brother. We're both tremendous patrons of fanfiction, and, like Jared, love Anime and electronic games. Josie is also a fan of karate, and has a black belt (note: will kill on demand). Though she refuses to admit it, she has the rudiments of some real talent at writing and drawing, as well.
I'm lucky enough to still have all four of my grandparents, and not a one of them looks as though they'll be leaving anytime soon. They all have energy and enthusiasm enough for people half their age! It is really nice to see them still living life to the fullest. My grandparents on my father's side are named Lynn and Ethel Ziegler, and live in North Dakota in the summer, and in Arizona in the winter. My grandparents on my mother's side are named Gordon and Alice Dahlberg, and live near to us in Minnesota in the summer, and (again) in Arizona in the winter. And here's a treat: a pair of photos of Grandpa Gordon when he was very young. Check 'em out!
When I left home to make my way in the world, I left behind three beloved cats.
First, the eldest, Taffy. Taffy was our first cat; she and her brother (whom we named Sam) came to our house from off the street. We had had no cats previously, because of an allergy that our mother possessed, but she seemed to show no adverse reaction to these cats, and so they were allowed to stay. Sadly, Sam was not a very smart cat, and was killed by a car only a few months after we had taken him in. But Taffy lived on. She's the most cautious of our three cats today, and prefers to hide from unfamiliar company. Generally aloof, and a little bit grumpy, she interacts with people on her own terms, and will hide if she doesn't want attention.
Sammy is our second-youngest cat. We named her Samantha, in honor of the deceased Sam (whom she somewhat resembled). Sammy has had a pretty rough life. Most of her life, she spent in a sort of half-ill state, sneezing frequently, and with a perpetually stuffy nose. Eventually, that faded away, but then she managed to break one of her rear legs quite badly, requiring it's amputation. Today, however, she seems to be fairly happy, even though she needs to limp along on three legs. She and Taffy are pretty close, and we often catch them cleaning one another.
Our youngest cat is Tiger, the first male cat we ever owned that lived longer than two months. Tiger's a couple of brain cells short of a pair. He seems completely unable to learn, even simple things like keeping off the table. He also has a pretty incredible metabolism. He seems to eat more than enough to get by, but, unlike our other two cats, who are pretty plump, he's always thin. He's tolerated by our other two cats, but not really accepted by them. This might have something to do with the way that he often treats them as his own, personal playthings.
To fill the void left by the absence of those Cats of Yore, I adopted a pair of kittens, a boy and a girl from the same litter. Kittens, who, thanks to my spoiling them, grew into rather obese cats. Still, fat or no, I love them dearly, and am even now working to try to trim them down to size a bit.
The male I named Neko-Chan, due largely to my growing fascination with Anime ('Neko' is Japanese for cat, and the 'Chan' ending here can be taken for an affectionate diminutive - think of it as meaning "cute little kitty"). Neko-Chan is a lot more demanding of affection than his sister, constantly forcing his way onto my lap whenever I'm sitting down. But around strangers, he's extremely shy. When visitors come by, he typically presses himself low to the ground and tries to edge his way to the safety of the underside of my bed, as soon as he can (Mom jokingly suggested that I should have named him Scuttles - and I must admit, the name fits like a glove!).
The female is Nuku Nuku, whom I named after the lead character from the anime "All-Purpose Cultural Cat-Girl Nuku Nuku". (Why? On the anime, Nuku Nuku is an android girl with the augmented brain of a cat; my kitten bore a fair resemblance to the cat that provided the brain, and so I named her so - today, of course, she's way too fat for the resemblance to hold, but such is life). Nuku Nuku (MY Nuku Nuku) is very friendly, and while she doesn't monopolize my attention as her brother does, she's never afraid of newcomers. She's not terribly bright, though. She loves to ambush and wrestle with Neko-Chan, who is significantly larger than she is. Needless to say, Neko-Chan always pastes her.
Comments? Questions? Death threats?
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