All right. Just remember: you’ve brought this on yourself. My name is Jared Robertson and I live in the most beautiful part of the world: the northwest quadrant of Washington State. My home town of Bellingham is 89 miles north of Seattle and approximately 20 miles south of the Canadian border. Unfortunately, I still live there. It can only barely be considered a city with a population hovering somewhere around 65,000, plus or minus depending on whether or not Western Washington University (“Western” or “WWU” for short) is in session. My favorite place in town is Whatcom Falls Park, which was partially burned to a crisp in a fuel pipeline explosion on June 10, 1999. These days, the park is on the mend, but you can still see a lot of blackened trees.... The people in charge of the Olympic Pipeline company are in jail now.

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       I often regret not leaving town to go to school, but at the time, saving money seemed more important than personal freedom. Boy was I wrong. Someday I’ll put the whole issue in my LiveJournal (see MIND); this isn’t the place to discuss it. I attended computer science classes at WWU for several years, but I don’t have the finances to continue right now. I hold an Associate of Arts/Sciences degree from Whatcom Community College (they still don’t have a Web site, weirdos) and I graduated from Sehome High School. My grades were less than ideal at any of these institutions of higher learning, but I must have done something right or they never would’ve let me leave. Of slightly lesser importance are the other schools I’ve attended: Whatcom Middle School (grades 6, 7, & 8), Roosevelt Elementary School (grades 3, 4, & 5), and Bellingham Christian School (grades K, 1, & 2).

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     I am currently employed by the Community Food Co-op as a cashier. Recently, I was a contract employee for both Imaginary Lanscape LLC and Speccom Systems (as technical support for Plextor). Being a contractor is both good and bad: you can make your own hours, you get a good wage, and you learn a lot, but it essentially means you’re unemployed as far as banks are concerned and you have to do a lot of extra work on your taxes because your “employer” doesn’t withhold them for you. I did it for almost three years and I enjoyed the work (most of the time), but the lack of reliable income really hurt me. It’s a good way to escape your dead end retail job at a local grocery store, but it’s not a real good ultimate career move.
     11.26.2004:Nothing new to report on the job front. I find it difficult to look for a job when I already have a pretty good one. And my application to return to school was denied.
     If you would like to determine whether or not you can pay me a lot of money to work for you, follow this path to view a PDF version of my résumé. If you just want to pay me a lot of money, let’s talk: zorkfox@gmail.com.

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       I don’t smoke, I don’t really drink except maybe a few times a year, and I don’t do drugs. Primarily, those are expensive and stupid pastimes for which I have no need; however, I do my best not to hassle people who choose to indulge unless I think it’s going to kill them. I do admit to having one addiction, though: Music. I listen to music whenever I get the chance: While walking, reading, taking tests, working, sitting at the computer, role-playing, driving, and so on. You might catch me singing along if I know the lyrics (I like Sting and Smash Mouth because they sing in an easy range for me to reach, on top of being good), or sometimes just humming. My favorites are Amethystium, Chris Spheeris, Deep Forest, Delerium, Jan Hammer, Enya, Enigma, Sting, Vangelis (this site has been “under construction” for about ten years; I now assume nothing will ever appear), and most classical music. I also love movie scores and soundtracks. A few of the best are 1492: Conquest of Paradise (Vangelis), Aliens (James Horner), Broken Arrow (Hans Zimmer), The Dark Crystal (Trevor Jones), Gladiator (Hans Zimmer), Ronin (Elia Cmiral), The World is Not Enough (David Arnold), and (not a movie) Trigun (Tsuneo Imahori).
     Remember when CDs used to come in those big, beautiful boxes with photos and artwork all over them instead of just a plain old jewel case? I still have several of those from my early collecting days and sometimes wish they’d bring them back. OK, call me an enemy of the environment, I like the pictures.

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     For the technically minded among you, I’ll drop in a few lines about my computer. It causes me so much trouble, yet I don’t seem to wise up enough to throw it out the window. I even gave it a name: “Quendor.” It’s a Pentium III running at 800 MHz and has 512 megabytes of RAM, a 10 gigabyte hard disk, a 3.5" floppy drive, a Linksys wireless NIC, a Santa Cruz sound card from Turtle Beach, a DVD-ROM, and a PlexWriter 12/10/32.