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About Siggi The Super Geek

I was born and raised in Reykjavik, Iceland. I have two sisters, and I'm the middle child.

My dad retired a few years ago after spending 50 years working on fishing boats in one capacity or another. Most of his career he was an engineer, working his way to chief engineer in the later years of his career. The boats he was on fished in the North Atlantic Ocean which made for more of a challenging conditions than what you see on the TV show "The Deadliest Catch".

My Mom spent her career as an anesthesiology nurse. She was the first certified in that nursing specialty in the entire country of Iceland. She is currently semi retired occasionally helping out the local hospital.

Both my sisters and my parents still reside in Iceland.

My parents tell me that from a very early age I was always interested in technology. They tell stories about how they didn't have to worry about their nick nags when I was a toddler as all I would touch were their radio and the electrical outlets. Growing up in the '60's there was no such things as child proofing the outlets. I guess I gave my parents quite the scare on more than one occasions playing with various metal objects near an outlet. One thing to note is that the standard electrical currency in the outlets in Iceland (as in most of Europe) is 220v AC 50 Hz single phase, twice the voltage as here in the US. So getting shocked gave you twice the jolt. Growing up with my geeky habits I got shocked on more than one occasion. It was quite the electrifying experience, one I recommend you avoid.

Growing up I was more of a nerd than a geek as my social skills were severely lacking for the longest time. My nerdiness manifested itself in multiple ways. I would spend hours every night on my school homework, was the "teacher's pet", teased by the bullies, etc. All the stereotypical nerd stuff. If I went to a school dance I was the wall flower, possible helping setting up,etc. In gym class I remember frequently hiding in the equipment room. It was a mutual unspoken agreement; I wasn't getting in the way of the jocks with my un-coordination and didn't suffer the embarrassment of the same. In seventh grade I got involved with the computer club and the electronics club. In the electronics club I started building my own electronics out of stuff like the Heath kits. For those that weren't exposed to geeks or nerds of the 70s Heath kits were these do it your self electronic kits. The kit would contain a pre-printed and pre-drilled out circuit board, all the components and a case. So all you had to do was to follow the instructions and assemble it all, including soldering the components onto the circuit board. This eventually lead to designing and building my own electronics including the printed circuit board. This meant designing the layout of the board, imprinting a blank board, etching it with acid and then drilling it.

In the computer club I got my first taste of programming and I dove into that. This was in the era when Tandy TRS-80, Commodore64 and Atari where the big names in "personal computing", productivity software suites hadn't been invented and Basic was a popular programing language (complete with line numbers and goto statements). IBM was making inroads with their PC and Apple was also making waves with the Apple II. I was probably in the 8th grade when I got my first computer, an Apple IIe with two 5.25" floppy drives and 128K of memory (these were awesome specs in the late 70's early 80's). The first time I even saw a hard drive was a 10MB hard drive on an Apple Lisa (product that completely flopped, but lead the way for the Mac) in the early 80's and probably had a price tab of close to what I paid for my computer. After I got my own computer I started to spend more time on it and the electronics kind of faded out.

The only non-nerd/geek hobby I had as a teen was horseback riding. As a young teen my parents would arrange for me to spend the summer working at a farm, just as general help. One year the farmer gave me a newborn foal as a bonus (Icelandic Pony bread). I would take it home and put it a stable not far from my neighborhood. I would go there daily to feed and groom it. While I had no idea what I was doing, and had very limited horseback riding experience, I go the wild idea that I would train it on my own. While I did eventually success, it was not without some trials, falls, etc. I think this was one occasion were my extreme stubbornness came in very handy. My training basically involved out-stubborning the horse. Once the horse got used to carry me around, having a saddle, bridle, etc., grown tired of bucking and trying to toss me off (usually successfully) training was over and we just went on rides. Eventually the nerd/geek part of my life overtook everything else and I ended up selling the horse.

After graduating from high school I went to a vocational technical school to study electronics. After graduation I spent couple of years working as a technician in the shop for a local electronics dealer. Back then electronics were actually repaired when they broke down and every decent electronic store had a service center where you could take your electronics to get them fixed.

After working in that field for a year or so I realized that electronics just wasn't going to fulfill me long term and decided to pursue a career in computers. For this I decided I needed a computer degree. In August of 1990 I arrive at SeaTac airport in Washington State to begin my studies at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma. I graduated in May of 1994 with a BS degree in Computer Engineering after which I started working for various companies in the Seattle Metro area doing various IT functions.

I eventually managed to gain some social skills and graduated from a nerd to a geek, then to a super geek. I think it was after I graduated from the technical school and joined the work force that I decided I needed to improve my social skills. It was very challenging and often very uncomfortable but with a lot of work over many years it gradually became easier and less uncomfortable until I started actually enjoying social gatherings.

I still maintain my geekiness. My place is filled with gadgets and gizmo's a plenty, multiple computers with multi monitors, racks of old routers and switches, etc.

In my spare time, when I'm not partaking in a social activity, I spend my time writing web sites (like this one), writing software (found on www.icecomputing.com) or learning about new networking technologies to name few of my geeky activities.

Other hobbies (in order) include dancing, theater, and just enjoying nature (camping, hiking, biking, etc).

At the time of this writing I'm about 3 weeks away from getting married. For more details about us and our upcoming nuptial check out http://www.siggiandmarlyn.net