Who?

Being a Very Frequently Asked Question

Martin Patrick Aidan MARKS
The Flying Ghoti
Date of Birth	7 June 1982
Place of Birth	Stepney, London, England
Current Home	Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Mother	Jane Caroline Shivnan
Father	Timothy John Marks
Current Age	26 years, 28 days
Height	6'0" / 1.83m
Weight	140lb / 63.5kg
Hair	Brown
Eyes	Green-Brown
Race/Ethnicity	Anglo-Hiberno-Welsh
Religion	Debatable (Zhuwusian?)
Political leaning	Leftish
Orientation	Straight
Education obtained	B.A. × 2 (Linguistics/Spanish)
Schools	Harford Heights (1987-1990) Grace & St. Peter's (1990-1993) Park School (1993-1996) John Carroll (1996-2000)
Undergrad at	SJCA (2000-2001) UMD (2003-2006)
Profession	Draftsman

I'm not particularly good at writing about myself. A Hundred Facts List, however, I can just about manage:

1. My name is Martin Patrick Marks.
2. I'm named for my maternal grandfather, Martin Patrick Shivnan.
3. I never met him. He died before I was born.
4. In fact, I only ever really knew one of my biological grandparents—my maternal grandmother—though I met my father's mother when I was eight and visited England.
5. I'm technically a Cockney, but am of mixed Irish, Welsh, and English stock.
6. My parents moved to America when I was two, and I've lived in the same two states ever since: Maryland and confusion over my national identity. (Get it? Eh? Eh?)
7. I lived in Baltimore from the ages of two to fourteen.
8. Now I'm living there again.
9. I BELIEVE.
10. I am 26 years, 28 days old.
11. Hell yes that's some dynamic PHP right there.
12. I'm a PHP autodidact.
13. Actually, I'm a pretty-much-everything-I-know autodidact.
14. I was never a very good student in school. I had a severe aversion to doing anything that didn't feel like it was helping me learn—which is to say, a severe aversion to about 90% of what my teachers expected me to do.
15. My favorite professor at UMD: "Martin wasn't crazy about coming to class—but when he did, he always had something to contribute!" And this from one of the most famous generativist linguists in the country—and an accomplished Scottish dancer to boot!
16. My collegiate career was tremendously unfocused. I had 171 credits when I finally graduated—and an embarassingly low GPA.
17. Before the University of Maryland, I was a student at St John's College in Annapolis, Maryland.
18. Yeah, the place with the books.
19. It wasn't a very good fit for me, and I ended up leaving of my own accord after three semesters.
20. Admittedly, if I'd waited five more minutes to leave of my own accord, they'd've kicked me out.
21. I'd like to claim it was because I threw a flaming chicken out the window or something, but it was just the "bad student" thing again. It was some other guy who threw the flaming chicken out the window. (And I don't think he got kicked out for it, actually.)
22. After all the trials and tribulations—and six and a half years after graduating high school—I finally graduated, with degrees in linguistics and Spanish language and literature.
23. I now work at a precast concrete company.
24. Never once in my job have I been called upon to diagram a sentence or translate Cervantes.
25. Actually, I love my job. I'm a draftsman/estimator/whatever is needed this week.
26. I came into this job with absolutely no relevant experience whatsoever. My stepfather told his boss I was smart, and so I was hired. Hooray for nepotism!
27. And yet it turns out that I'm really quite good at my job after all. Hooray for competence!
28. I taught myself 3D modeling in AutoCAD by the end of my first month, on my own initiative. Seriously, I'm awesome.
29. Man, I am going to have one seriously complicated résumé when everything is said and done.
30. When I was in middle school, I wanted to become a herpetologist, which is someone who studies reptiles and amphibians, not someone who studies herpes.
31. When I was five or so, I wanted to be a taxi driver.
32. I didn't learn to drive until I was 24. Hi ho.
33. Knowing how to drive is good, I guess. If nothing else, it means my sister has to call me occasionally.
34. Granted, most of our conversations start out with "hey, brother, could you drive me to [godforsaken place on the other side of the state]?" and end with me whining about having been talked into driving to [godforsaken place on the other side of the state].
35. Aww, I'm kidding. We have a pretty good relationship, all things considered.
36. My sister is 14 years, 346 days old.
37. All the Nutella in the galaxy could not convince me to be 14 years, 346 days old again. Living through it vicariously is bad enough.

My non-linear family tree. (Click to enlarge.)
38. Actually, she's my half-sister. I also have two step-siblings, two step-nieces, a non-biological grandmother equivalent, and whatever my half-sister's half-brother counts as. (My quarter-brother?)
39. There is no such thing as a normal family.
40. I have been blogging for 6 years, 237 days.
41. If you're looking for archives from more than 2 years, 237 days ago, though, you won't find them here. I completely rebooted my blog in 2005.
42. I do still have those entries. But I have no desire at all to share them.
43. Everything on this site, with the exception of MediaWiki, is managed through my perpetually-beta DIY blogware, which I call "BlogHead".
44. BlogHead is essentially an overgrown comment script, but I have to say, it works remarkably well for what it is.
45. I was once attacked by feral dogs in İstanbul.
46. Now I'm immune to rabies! It's like a superpower!
47. If I could have any superpower I could think of, apart from the rabies thing... I would probably get greedy.
48. I write, but feel awkward about calling myself a writer.
49. I was hoping to finish my first novel, Fear Sweeney, by 1^st November 2007, which would have been its fifth birthday. Ah well.
50. I wrote the first draft during NaNoWriMo 2002.
51. I shopped around an almost-final draft in 2006, but I came to realize it wasn't quite ready.
52. Form rejections make great bookmarks.
53. There is a cat on my lap right now.
54. Her name is Александра Кочковна Паша.
55. Actually, her name is Sasha. But I like calling her Александра Кочковна to confuse her.
56. Sasha is an indoor cat who somehow got locked out of the house and spent seven weeks this summer fending for herself.
57. A week or two after she turned up in the back yard again, we managed to lure her back into the house.
58. Immediately on getting home, she reverted to her indoor cat personality. Cats are weird!
59. I realize I just wasted six of my facts on my cat, but come on, this is the Internet. What else is it for, if not for talking about cats?
60. I used to be a dog person.
61. I was already more or less converted when the whole "wild Turkish dogs" thing happened. That kind of put the kibosh on the dog person thing.
62. Don't get me wrong, I still like dogs. In moderation.