Lit-Net Member Interviews

[Madhuri]

Are you sure he'll reply in detail. I think all he says is 'Yes' or 'No' to any type of question and if at all it goes further, there are just a few more words in the reply.

But yes, I will wait for this interview. because he is a mystery to me.

[ClaesGefvenberg]

I'm proud to announce that the next Lit-Net Member Interview will be with
Admin

Good job! I'm looking forward to it

/Claes

[woeful painter]

Wow, such a nice thread!! It's so great to know more of all the people who were interviewed, great job Pen and Aimus!

After Chris....may we have SCHER???? PLEASE???

[kathycf]

Hi Sub,how about two people want others to think they are of another gender I mean it's possible to see Kathy Or Taleen with hidden moustaches

Shhh, I thought that was just our secret Miss T. Now everybody will want a moustache....

[miss tenderness]

sorry Kath,could nt' help it

[AimusSage]

Last chance to send in questions for Admin's interview!

Don't be late! You have until noon tomorrow.

[Koa]

woooooooooooow looking forward!!!

[Nightshade]

Aimus did I send my questions or did I just discuss them with you :S

[AimusSage]

Aimus did I send my questions or did I just discuss them with you :S

Yes, you did.

[Kaltrina]

I read this thread, and I think it's great. Great idea and very nicely done Aimus and Pensive... I like it a lot, and looking forward to other interviews...
Very nice interviews Pen, Robin, Logos...

[Virgil]

Kaltrina - You're missed around here. Stop by more often. Please.

[Koa]

kaaltrinaaaaaaa!

oooh am i late i have a question! noon in which time zone? hmm i guess nowhere it's earlier than noon by now...oh yeah in australia it's earlier than tomorrow's noon

[AimusSage]

The Interview committee is proud to present the interview with none other than
Admin
who we all know as Chris, the Administrator of this site.

About the Literature-Network

1. How are you today?
My back is sore from moving a big pot in my garden.

2. How did you decide on your username? We know you are the Administrator, but why not a more personal username?
In the beginning people didn’t necessarily know I was the admin, and so having it be my username was a good solution.

3. Why did you initially start with the Literature Network?
I made my first website (a personal one) in 1994, and I made more personal ones in the years after, but then in 1999 I started thinking of a site I could publish that could be viable commercially. I decided to make a site about Shakespeare that eventually morphed into what you see today.

4. About how many hours do you spend on here every day?
On a day where I’m actively working on something for the site I can do 8 hours. Like when I did the new design. On a normal day when I’m just checking in to see if there are any issues I need to give attention to it’s probably around one total hour spaced out in multiple increments of course.

5. Why you hardly take part (post) in the General Chat section? (Suggested by Subterranean).
A lack of time. I don’t have time to read and post in every thread (obviously, my post count is now dwarfed by many members). I read every post in the Literature Network subforum, and in our hidden forums for moderator discussions, but otherwise only read/post in a thread if I see the title on the forum homepage and it draws me in.

6. Don't you ever wish you weren't the Admin but just a random user of the forum, to have the chance and the time to relax and join our sometimes-silly conversations? (suggested by Koa.)
Honestly, no. There are forums I participate in where I’m just a member, so I get that there, but in general even there I tend to stay out of general chat. It is basically a time issue again. I used to chat and whatnot more in the 90’s when I was younger and less busy, but I grew out of it I guess.

7. You seem to be a person of few words. Do you believe less is more? (suggested by Madhuri).
I don’t necessarily believe less is more, but I’m a very to-the-point kind of guy.

8. What would you say is the best aspect of the forum/site?
The moderators. Without them I couldn’t do it. If you want to know what has attributed most to the site’s success it would probably be the book search feature. There are other sites like this, and most have search features now, but when it first launched it was one of the only ones that did, and that made a difference in early promotion.

9. Since I assume you chose the smilies we have, why did you choose them and which is your favourite? Also have you considered giving us more? (Suggested by Nightshade)
I don’t think I have a favorite, the one I use most often would be the common winking one. I chose them merely as a package deal and yes, I could add more. It also doesn’t surprise me that Nightshade asked this

10. I think everyone is impressed with the amount of works you have on the site, how do you find all these works?
Most of the works were digitised by Project Gutenberg, a long standing project to digitize books. It is nice because PG doesn’t put any restrictions on use. As for which books to choose, originally it started with my own experience. Shakespeare was first, then Homer, then people like Dickens and Wells. Eventually though most of the books or authors came out of suggestions from users.

11. You recently created a new sub-forum called newsletters. There are currently two, both of which are a nice touch, can you tell us a bit about them, and are more on the way?
With the recent forum upgrade a new system was included that could take RSS feeds and post them automatically to the forum. The two newsletters right now are two that I publish as spinoffs from this site. I am open to adding any literature-based newsletter to this forum though that includes an RSS feed. This way you can read a newsletter right in the forum. I’ve asked Today in Literature about doing it with them but they’ve ignored me so far. If you have any suggestions let me know.

12. Does the site pay? (Or does it eat away at your life savings?) or does it run about break even? (Suggested by Nightshade)
The forums are about break even, but the main site is profitable. Of course it took years to build and I wasn’t making anything at first so who knows what the actual hourly rate evens out to.

13. What other sites do you have?
Lots. On my last birthday Logos listed some. There is The Fantasy Forum which is linked to from the forum that I own. There is also Cbswords.com which is an ecommerce site of mine. You’ll be able to find a lot of the sites through the hub which is Jalic.com. One newer site/forum of mine can be found at http://www.backyardgardening.net/. If you’re interested in gardening at all I invite you to check it out.

14. How do servers work? Do you have massive computers in your basement that store all the information or what?(suggested by Nightshade)
The servers are located in a Datacenter in Texas. The company that provides them is EV1servers.net. I currently have 4, but one is basically for this site alone. I am thinking about upgrading it soon. Currently the server this site is on is a P4 3.2 ghz w/ HT that runs Red Hat Linux and has 4 gb of RAM. I’m thinking about upgrading it to a dual Opteron or Dual Xeon server though.

End of part I.

[AimusSage]

Part II of the interview with Admin:

Personal Questions

15. What is your date of birth?
3/9/81. I’m 25.

16. [i]How would you describe yourself, your personality?[/]
White and Nerdy?(Editor: Click the link!!!). I have a nice car, and rims that aren’t stationary would be cool. I don’t know Klingon but I do know Javascript. I don’t have a Segway, but I do have a business making websites. I like Picard I think more than Kirk. I do like Renaissance festivals.

Seriously though, I’m tall, 6’5. I’m a decent specimen of a man I guess, could stand to lose some weight. I’m intelligent, I know a little about a lot. I’m always explaining things or teaching things, just random things. It annoys my wife sometimes. I’m blessed with a very good memory and tend to remember most things I read or hear and so I just regurgitate that stuff all day. Especially anything that has to do with history, be it politics, wars, discoveries, science, literature. If it took place a long time ago, it interests me. I’m a college dropout, I lost interest. It annoys me to say that though because I always think people think I’m stupid if I dropped out of college. For me, with my business doing well, it was a waste of time, and I tested in the top 1 percentile on my entrance exams anyways.


I’m stubborn, I’m blunt, I’m honest to a fault. I’m romantic, I like kids, I’ll probably be a good dad.

17. Could you tell us a little more about what you do?
I publish websites. I have a handful of ecommerce sites but most are advertising driven. Mostly what I do nowadays falls into a few categoryes.

1. Coding/Design – I do this less now than I used to since I often hire people to do this part for me.
2. Management & Marketing – This is what I mostly do, just getting the websites out there and keeping them running. Dealing with users, etc.
3. Writing – Writing content is what I’m doing more and more of, and I like it. I’d love to be a novelist one day.


18. Can you tell us a bit about your various hobbies?
I write, I read. I play video games, but my biggest hobby is gardening. My yard is awesome. I’d like to eventually retire from the Internet stuff, build a castle in the mountains, and raise sheep or honey bees or something and have a somewhat pastoral life and write.

19. Do you like sports, if so do you play sports yourself?
I played football in highschool, and soccer before that. Currently the only sport I still do is skiing, which I enjoy. I don’t much follow professional sports because I do not like the business of it, but I enjoy our local college teams.

20. Do you like to travel?
Absolutely. I’ve been to Tanzania, Canada of course (only a few hours from the border) and Germany, France, England. I really like Europe because of all the history, being so into history it is just so cool to be somewhere with such age. I’ve also taken my wife to Jamaica a couple times. I’ve never been to the western US though, and never seen the Pacific Ocean. I’ve never been to New York, so there is definitely a lot of travelling still to do.

21. Which countries have you visited? And which ones would you really like to visit someday?
I think I’ve already answered the first part. I’d like to go back to Europe for like a 3 week river cruise to do Germany and France. Then probably back again to do the British Isles, then probably back again to do Italy and Greece maybe. Maybe a Mediterranean cruise. I’d like to visit Egypt one day, China, Australia, New Zealand, maybe India.


22. What do you like about where you live, your country?
The freedom. The openness. The diversity. One thing you notice in a lot of other countries is that everyone looks the same. While it is true, here in the US, we do have a white majority, the fact is that there are people of all sorts of ethnicities that are easy to see. This of course means that there are a lot of great restaurants I also enjoy how the US is always on the cutting edge of science and technology, I’m into that sort of thing.

23. Do you have a personal hero, or someone you look up to?
Not especially. I take a lot of inspiration from my Dad. He is a very hard worker and a good provider and very level headed and reasonable, but I don’t see it as anything special. As long as they’re not coming from a broken home I think most people look up to their parents. I certainly have problems with them too though.

24. Have you ever been forced to report anybody to legal authorities due to their behavior here on the forum? (I'm thinking specifically about an incident in which a certain person threatened to come to East Lansing and vandalize your property) (Suggested by Basil)
Yup, I reported him. I get weirdo threats on the Internet all the time, but in this case the guy only lived half an hour away and you cannot be too careful.

Favourites

25. We can’t have an interview on your literature site without asking the obvious questions, so who is your favourite author?
Hmm… it is hard to say. I do not think I have a favorite. Of authors on the site I like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Shakespeare. Donne is definitely my favorite poet and I like some of Wilde’s stuff. Of more modern authors I like fantasy, Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Dave Duncan. I like Michael Chrichton. The Da Vinci Code was good (if easy).

26. And your favourite book?
Again, I cannot say. I do not have one favorite. The book I have read most often (probably about 5 times) is the Dragonlance Chronicles Trilogy by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, but I do not necessarily think its my favorite. Of the books on this site my favorite is probably The Great Gatsby.

27. What kind of music do you enjoy?
90’s alternative. 80’s rock. Very little that has come out since. I like some rap, I don’t like greed-rap (ala Puff Daddy) and I don’t like wanna-be-a-thug rap (ala mostly everyone else), but I like Eminem. The lyrics have to be meaningful for me. I also like classical or ethnic instrumentals, irish jigs etc. Some reggae (Bob Marley, Sean Paul, some Shaggy or Wyclef). Two of my favorite songs that are hard to classify are Laura Creamer’s rendition of Bonny Portmore and Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s Over the Rainbow/What a wonderful world.

Bands I like: Black Lab, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Bush, Counting Crows, Live, Matchbox 20 (but not Rob Thomas), older Aerosmith, Guns and Roses, some Metallica, Alanis Morissette, Weezer. I hate Nickleback with a passion. I hate corporate-made music.

28. Tell us something about your favourite movie.
Hard to pick a favorite, I like the LOTR Trilogy. The usual suspects. Star Wars. Braveheart. Braveheart was definitely my favorite until LOTR came out, now I don’t know. Notting Hill is probably my favorite romantic comedy.

29. Any other favourites we should know about? How about TV shows?
If you don’t watch Battlestar Galactica and are at all into Science Fiction/Space you’re doing yourself a disservice. It is an extremely well done military-sci-fi show. I am amazed all the time that the Sci-Fi channel can afford to put it out. The first two seasons are out on DVD now, rent them, the third season just started last week. HBO’s Rome was excellent as well, the next season for that comes out in 2007, I don’t know if it is on DVD yet. I like Lost, and Jericho (which is new this fall). I like Law and Order, mostly for Sam Waterson, I prefer the legal bits rather than the police bits. I love South Park. Trey Parker and Matt Stone are geniuses. Team America: World Police was a great movie too.

And now, the most important question of them all
30. How do you like your turnips?
I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a turnip.

Thank you for the interview.

[AimusSage]

Admin, I must say, you have excellent taste! Battlestar Galactica!!!

And what's this about you going to be a good dad, is there a little one on the way?