My first name is Emil and I am Polish. My last name is extremely rare, even for back home. I was born in the poorest province in Poland in a
small town 30km from Lublin. I was raised in a tiny Stalinist era flat with my mother, sister and grandfather. My dad, brother and grandmother had left prior to my birth and the time of Martial Law. 4 years later the rest of my family finally got a VISA to leave for the US and we settled in
Fort Worth Texas. That's the large city NEXT to Dallas, but not Dallas. I did not have any friends in my neighborhood to play with, and I changed schools often enough that it was hard to keep any friends from previous years. My dad did not believe in spending money on anything, so things like Scouts, little league sports or any sort of social activities were absent from my childhood. So this lack of social training was distinctly lacking in my life and in later years it has severely affected my personality. So instead I filled my time with reading novels, encyclopedias, watching ungodly amounts of PBS and other television, and drawing. I got started drawing pretty early, maybe 7-8. At the time I was pretty good at it too but didn't practice enough.
My first computer was a
Tandy1000 TL/2 that we got in 1988. The first thing I learned to do on it was use the Draw program in
Deskmate. (a poor Windows clone for DoS) The first picture I did was a portrait of a general. For 16 color, it was pretty good. I was always interested in space, design, architecture and engineering.. but none of those really worked out for me. Growing up I was generally the smartest kid in class, even correcting some history textbooks at times. I was also usually the smallest kid as well. What happens when you can't defend yourself physically when you get bullied? Well you either become a comedian, or snarky wit. Many of you have been on the recieving end of said wit. Since I always scored high on various standardized tests, my parents decided to have me follow my equally smart older brother to our cities advanced students program.
MAGNET was an idea to take smart kids from the suburbs and bus them to the inner city to underachieving schools to balance things out. So I spent grades 6-12 in mostly black schools. It's an interesting experience being one of the few white guys in a class.
After art/design, my childhood dream was to be a military officer, an Air Force pilot to be exact. I've been an avid consumer of anything military related since I could read, and even before. When I'd to go the library as a kid, I'd sit for hours reading about tanks and WW2 related subjects in the reference ailes. Also in high school, I had the opportunity to join the JROTC program. I liked it. I liked the uniform, the discipline, the attitude, social nature, and physical aspects of it. I was good at it too. My graduating year I was chosen by a panel of military instructors as the top cadet in the city. Mostly a figurehead, but a good thing to put on a college application. Unfortunately my normal school subjects werent as good. When I was younger, I was a big fish in a small pond, but when I got to these advanced schools, my grades were somewhat average, especially compared to some of the other students. Try as I might, I couldn't compete on even footing with some of them, so I stopped trying, especially in Math. I did fine in Trigonometry but CalculusII kicked my but. Differential Equations was offered at my school but due to a scheduling snafu by my councelor, I was a year behind in math. But I still
graduated in the top 10% of my very very small class. Unfortunately, my social life was completely lacking. I hated High School and about 90% of the poeple I went to class with, I wouldn't give them the time of day if I met them on the street. Only a small handful I still keep in touch with. The rest can go hang.
During this time I had been trying to get admitted to the US Air Force Academy, but it was a lost cause because I was not yet a US Citizen. So instead my dad suggested I follow my older sister to Texas A&M University because of it's
Reserve Officer Training program. There I could go to a military school within a 40 thousand student major university. As crazy as it sounds, these were the
best years in my life. Even crazier, I found it easier at times than staying at home with my overly strict parents. During my 4 years there, I was preparing myself to become a USAF officer and things were looking good. My grades were average at times, absolutely nothing to write home about. What I did excel at was my Air Force Officer Qualifying Test... The officers at the Military Sciences Building were rather vocal at how
jealous they were at my scores, nothing lower than 92nd percentile. 95th Pilot and 94th Navigator.. on a test where 60th would be competetive. But unfortunately I had 2 drawbacks. One was my poor vision, the other my refusal to kiss butt. So in my
senior year I paid $3400 to have laser eye surgury because the officer's said that they'd recategorize me from Missles/Space to Pilot with my scores. I did, they didn't.
That didn't matter too much because soon after that, there was an incident that caused me to have a major nervous breakdown. Infact in a few days I'm coming up on the 7th anniversary of it. No need for details, but I learned that no matter what I plan, there is always some jackass, or group of buffoons that will joyfully ruin your plans/life. That nervouse breakdown was just the prelude to nearly 2 years of deep clinical depression. I became sick, stopped going to class, and saw my dreams die before my eyes. I lost my USAF contract, dropped out of school and never got my degree. So I had to move back home to parents I couldn't stand. With no degree, and no money to go back to school, I had a hard time finding a job. After a year I managed to find some menial work but I hate it still. I did not come out of my depression until I moved out from my parents house. That was 5 years ago and I haven't had a good time since.
I do not get along with my family. We seem to have a genetic nack for not communicating with each other even the most basic of ideas. What love and strong relationships most poeple have for their blood relatives, I have for my friends. And I have a very small number of poeple I can trust and truly call friends, and I'd do anything for
them. My parents, especially my father, was overly strict. I was the baby and they didn't even let me drive until I was 21. I didn't even have my first
gf until later that same year. As I said, military school was less strict and more
fun than living at home.
But now, I live alone, no children or ex's to support. My politics is 95% Republican, only a few things on their platform I dissagree with. Most of you would call me a neocon... don't care.
The only game I'm currently playing is Borderlands.
As for my computer skillz: I have been using Bryce since 1997 and
Photoshop since 1995. When I was depressed, these things were the only thing that kept my mind occupied. I can use Bryce in my sleep and I prefer it over all other programs. I've always wanted to create, just MAKE things. And when I first visited CFC back in 2001, then 2003, my propensity for creating art now had an outlet. When I figured out the procedure on how to make units, I became obsessed with it.. hence the 2000 units I've done. I work a
crappy job in the evenings. I'm awake all night and sleep during the day. I have nothing else to do in the meantime. Because of my awful schedule I don't even have a social life as my normal days off are in the middle of the week. Last year I had to stop my only hobby (making units) because of a series of money problems (car) that left me nearly broke and even had a minor (relatively) nervous breakdown.
In the past I've tried to help others become unit makers and but the results have been less than satisfying. I can count on 1 hand (and not even use all my fingers) on the number of successes I've had. Why? because they seem to take my gifts and dissapear. I tell them and teach them about all the programs that are needed and they get discouraged. OR, they make a few nice things, I offer my 3d models.. they take them and are
NEVER HEARD FROM AGAIN! Getting others to work with me is just as hard. Even when I provide all the tools needed for poeple to express their wants, 99.999999% are either too lazy or talentless to even try. Sofar, only Ares and 19Delta have put forth the effort to work with me. So very dissapointing, which is why I stopped trying to help. I also don't like taking requests because of just the crazy amounts I used to get, and most of them were inane. Some of you might remember my Noob dictionary where I voiced my frustration.
Yes I am I high strung, overly obsessive and demand the impossible out of poeple, like the ability to read . That is how I have been my entire life and I'm not going to change any time soon. No I will not chill out and smoke a doobie.
Think of me as a TV program. You don't like it, don't watch it.
I guess I've written enough for now. It's descriptive enough for this, but still vague that you still don't know who I am, which is how I prefer it.
updated with pix.