I suppose if I’m going to do welcome posts I should also do my background. I go by Skip IRL, but have also been known as Samuel (my actual given name), Sam, Bob, David, and George at various points in life. Basically I just respond to any name shouted in my direction. The “ineffablebob” handle comes from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the bit where Arthur is the sandwich maker and the local holy/crazy man obeys the ineffable will of Bob.
Personal/Professional life: retired, 42, single, no kids (closest is two nieces, who I enjoy spoiling when I visit them, then returning them to my brother). Went to college at Rose-Hulman in Indiana, starting as an electrical engineer then switching to math/computer science when I realized that hardware was not my thing. Spent more than a decade in the IT industry as a consultant and systems architect, which sounds like it should follow from that Math/CS degree but in reality used almost none of it. Business process analysis and ERP integration doesn’t use much in the way of algorithm analysis or number theory! In the process I got to do a lot of travel around the USA and later the world. I’ve been to all 48 lower states, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, and technically the Netherlands and Alaska (only an airport in those cases).
Gaming: Started with a Commodore 64 and a neighbor’s Atari 2600, moving on to Nintendo and x86 PCs (at home) and Macs (at school). Spy Hunter, F-19 Stealth Fighter, Darklands, the various Super Marios, Civilization, etc, etc. D&D was frowned upon in my conservative evangelical upbringing, but I managed to absorb quite a bit of it anyway. In college I was introduced to Magic: The Gathering and went down the TCG rabbit hole for quite some time, playing over the next decade or so: Magic, Middle Earth (the ICE original), Star Trek, Wheel of Time, 7th Sea, Buffy (seriously!), L5R, The X-Files, Warcraft, Lord of the Rings (the Decipher one), and I’m sure a few more I can’t recall right now. Eventually extricated myself from the physical games, but I still play several online TCGs (Hearthstone and Eternal right now). Big fan of MMOs, too: City of Heroes (sadly now defunct), WoW, Guild Wars 2, Secret World, Marvel Heroes (also dead), Path of Exile, and quite a few more that I’ve dabbled in. And I love me some deckbuilders, primarily playing Star Realms and Hero Realms these days, with occasional forays into Dragonfire, Mystic Vale, Legendary, LoTR, Custom Heroes, and more.
Other Stuff: Love me some beer, mostly dark stuff, and I generally go to 2-3 festivals each year to sample stuff. Here in West Michigan we have a great craft beer scene. Big music fan of almost all kinds, but my first love is hard rock/metal and I frequent the Metal thread. I read quite a bit, although lately I’ve spent less time with books and more watching some of the gazillion hours of quality shows available on the various streaming services. (Finally caught up with Doctor Who most recently, and working through PKD’s Electric Dreams right now.) Huge baseball fan, Cubs and Tigers, and somewhat less rabid fan of various other sports. And I’m a (very) amateur runner, doing 5k and 10k runs around the local area. Helps with staying in shape and also supports some good causes.
Edit: Oh yeah, and I joined back in 2011 via the old email-to-Tom-introduction method. Which was prompted by hearing about the boards on the old Jumping the Shark podcast. Tom was a guest on one episode IIRC, and the boards here were mentioned, so I thought I’d check it out. Been here ever since.