Welcome to WeAreSMRT.com. Click here to register
I don't think I've done one of these yet, so I figured I might as well.
Hi, my name is Kent Hovind, er Nigel McNaughton.
I am a Software Tester/Quality Assurance for Catalyst IT. Which is one of the biggest 'Open Source' companies in NZ. I don't know about world rankings, but when I joined I know that 'Bigger Open Source Company than Google' wasn't an exaggeration. Google only having like 8 OS staff compared to our 100.
I currently live in Wellington, New Zealand. Spent most of my life in this region.
I've traveled a bit, more than many, less than some. Been to the US about 8 times, longest trip was a year when I attended Hilliard Comstock Jr High for 8th Grade. Been to Canada once. Perhaps strangely however I have never been to Australia.
Growing up I don't really remember much before we moved to the US in '86. I have vague memories of kindergarten, school and church, but I don't think we were particularly religious. My parents seperated after like 7 months in the US which meant mum returned to NZ with the kids. And that's when Mum did become religious and we along with her.
Bounced around a lot that first year or two. I attended some ridiculous number of elementary schools (14 or so) before settling back to Paraparaumu, Wellington where I spent my teens (except for that Year in the US). We had been 'baptist' before but now mum settled on an Evangelical Church which I think hit all the fads you might expect. Drunk in the spirit, laughing, toungues, etc etc.
I attended Boys Brigade, largely apathetically, thought I did manage to carry it through to eventually getting the highest award 'The Queen's Medal' which meant a trip to Govt. House and shaking hands with the Queen's Current Representative.
See here's where things get quite funny looking back on it. I really didn't dig church at all. It took years of mum prodding me before I would get water baptized and another few years before I would fake get baptized in the holy spirit just to get her off my back, but I went into Young Earth Creationism in a HUGE way.
Being in NZ the flavour of YEC we had was Ken Ham's Answers in Genesis (I only heard of Hovind quite recently). Ken did speaking tours, as well as other reps from AIG. While I didn't subscribe to the magazine I did subscribe to the Technical Journal, had stacks of books, pretty much all the classics. I'm not sure why it enticed me so, perhaps it was the 'I have secret knowledge that most people don't know' illicit sort of attraction. But this is why I often think I know more about YECism than most YECs.
But I was definitely not fundy religious, which does strike me as odd looking back on it.
It is hard to pin down when I stopped being a YEC, I know that I definitely must have been during my first year at university, because I spent time tracking down the sources of quotes and facts from Creationist Literature. You know like if something was quotemined from a science paper I would go photocopy the paper to have a copy of the entire thing for myself, not that I bothered to actually read them.
I failed that year at Uni hard, passing like 3 out of 8 classes, worst results ever. I had just cruised through High School doing ok with no work, but that didn't work at Uni.
I worked for a year in the 'the family' cheesefactory. Before moving to Palmerston North to Attend Massey University (trying to start again).
Moving out of home and not having to pretend things for mum being probably one of the better things I've ever done, my remaining remnants of religiosity faded away quite quickly.
Got into magic and became a card carrying member of the Palmerston North Magic Circle.
Spent too many years trying to finish a degree before getting a job as a Emergency service/Directory Services switchboard operator before finally getting my job at Catalyst almost 2 years ago.
It was reading the God Delusion where I came to the conclusion that 'hey I guess I am an atheist' I think up until then was happy just pretending to be an 'agnostic'.
I'm a sci-fi, comedy, film/media geek. Hence my attraction to Mystery Science Theater 3000, and now RiffTrax who I did a little bit of part time work for, so I can pretend I work with Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett etc. Also enjoy boardgames too since being introduced to some awesome ones when I moved down here to wellington. Though I currently only own Agricola.
My favourite PC game is TF2 which I play quite regularly, and Rock Band 2 on the Xbox which I don't play quite as much, but when I do it's mostly drums, trying to make the transition from medium to hard unsuccessfully.
And I have and pretty much have always had a serious weight problem.
Oh and trying to get back into Magic after slacking off since I moved to wellington.
Oh and still hoping to finish my degree, maybe in a month or so.
So there I think more than you ever wanted to know.
Wow that feels like a mess, but so's my life really. : P
