Post something interesting about yourself

[Nathan the Machinist]

Post something interesting about yourself. Brag a little. Maybe you're double jointed. Perhaps you can hold your breath for 4 minutes. You once saved somebody on the side of the road with CPR. You can run a sub 6 minute mile. You have perfect pitch. You can sharpen knives so sharp they can cut hairs without touching the skin. You're a 2000 level chess player. You started a company that's now worth 50 million. You invented a new color. Lots of really interesting folks here. Let's hear it. Show us your big beautiful dorky self.

I'll get started

When I was working in plastic product design, the largest injection molded part that I designed was a freaking 62 lb shot. Also, at my old house, I once mowed the front yard, backyard, sides and shoulder across the street in a little less than 15 minutes.


Okay. Go!

 

[BrettUnder]

I worked at CPK for about 8 years back in the 90's.



















California Pizza Kitchen.

 

[Jeff_t]

Looking for a folder

 

[El_Bribon]

I was a freelance writer and had several articles posted in the local newspaper, plus a national magazine in the mid to late '90s.

ETA: I also designed a drainage project (under the supervision of a P.E.) to alleviate flooding of a road. The flooding was bad enough it made the road impassable during moderate to heavy rains. I used a huge plastic culvert (I think it was 36") because the grade was not much and I needed as much cover for the road. With pipe being plastic it's Q (IIRC) was very low, thereby making resistance to flow very minimal. Where I live we get heavy rains in the summer. After we finished the project, I stopped by after a storm. I was proud of the fact this design worked like a charm - no flooded streets and the neighborhood was thankful. I also did an intersection project but I don't want to get carried away.

 

[William Duncan]

I'm a introvert who has a passion for being a leader. Manufacturing production supervisor/ manger for 14 years. Such a mind dilemma ... I love the process but I don't think I love people..... I used to like people, but the new people coming into the work force are well.. watch that movie idiocracy.

 

[yoko]

Hi I'm Yoko

I love CPK's and all of the CPK crew and all of the CPK forum members!

I love beer , short walks to get more beer and my job

Here's what I worked on getting ready to paint a section of tomorrow

 

[MissesMeow]

I’m a regular-ass white American but I can distinguish between Irish, English, Scottish, Welsh, Australian, New Zealand and South African accents, usually with only a few spoken sentences. I can also tell if someone is from Northern Ireland, Dublin, Northern England or Liverpool based on their accent. This is almost all from just watching movies.

 

[TRfromMT]

I have never seen the movie “The Wizard of Oz.”

 

[yoko]

I’m a regular-ass white American but I can distinguish between Irish, English, Scottish, Welsh, Australian, New Zealand and South African accents, usually with only a few spoken sentences. I can also tell if someone is from Northern Ireland, Dublin, Northern England or Liverpool based on their accent. This is almost all from just watching movies.

That's cool!


I consider myself polarean because I'm half korean and polish

And my accent is usually slurred from my love of beer lol

 

[Tensegrity]

During my protracted post-bac education follies I had a side hustle converting VW turbo diesels (13 was the final count) to run on straight vegetable oil. With my own test rig, a 2003 TDI Jetta, I travelled from Maine to Bozeman and Libby, MT, then Nelson, BC, Seattle, then to Irvine CA with only what I had carried with me from Maine.

My first new car, I had that little oil burner up to ~230hp/290ft-lbs, with a Peloquin LSD up front and an extremely tall 5th gear, getting 60mpg... on waste canola oil from a little thai joint in Kennebunkport, ME.

Good times.

A typical weekend, between my studies (mine's on the left)

 

[unwisefool]

I've excavated 2000 year old cities.

In my first ever shooting competition, I placed 2nd out of about 60 contestants.

 

[yoko]

I've excavated 2000 year old cities.

In my first ever shooting competition, I placed 2nd out of about 60 contestants.

Congrats!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


That freaking awesome

 

[Box_Opener]

I run a department in an Art museum you know.

When I was a kid, my parents made me play sports. I am a big nerd but they made me play just about every big, American sport you can think of, for most of my life. Well, one day Freshman year in HS, an acquaintance of mine asked me and several of us if we would take a fencing class with him at our local YMCA. He was not the sort of guy who would do new things by himself. So… six of us did. I stuck with it until we finally got to sparring. A switch flipped in my brain like nothing I’ve ever felt and I fell in love. I started going to every possible practice. 7 years later I was a multi-state divisional champion on a full-ride scholarship and #8 in the country. Then I switched schools and dropped it all.

Six years after that I’d graduated and was living in Japan. By dumb luck, the Kendo teacher of the school I was teaching in was a very high ranking, well-known Kendo teacher. I started going to Kendo. Switch flipped again. Soon I was going five nights a week. And about a year after that, strange kendoka started coming to class to spar the foreigner. Word had gotten out. A policeman in my town stopped me and asked if I was the foreigner who did kendo with Kobayashi sensei. I ended up getting a dan rank while I was there and I beat up a lot of higher-ranked kendo guys. Kobayashi sensei and I went to Tokyo to the Budokan to watch nationals. It was awesome.

Anyway, that’s the story I never get to tell. I’m the one person I’ve ever known who has actually, truly done two separate sword-based martial arts. Not coincidentally, this is why the shiv is my favorite CPK. I could close my eyes, extend, and know exactly where the tip is.

 

[DennisM]

My three brothers (I am the baby of the family) always told me that I really wasn't their brother because mom and dad found me on the side of the road in a ditch and just raised me. I was a tormented child.

When I was deployed to King Abdul Azziz Air Base (Dhahran, Saudi Arabia) for Desert Storm 1990/91 a few interesting things happened to me.
1. Dan Quayle sat at my table in the mess tent and I didn't even know who the F he was at the time.
2. I threw a football around with General Norman Schwarzkopf and a couple others outside of the hardened shelters our F-15s were kept.
3. I played dominos with Tommy Hearns; FYI - black guys call dominos ... "playing bones".
4. My brother steamed opened a box of Cheezits, put a pint of JD in it, resealed it and sent it to me in a "care package". The only thing I could find to chase it with was warm pineapple juice. After finishing the pint and using the warm pineapple juice as a chaser - I was feeling pretty okay up until an "ALARM RED" sounded and I had to dawn my gas mask. The smell of the JD and pineapple juice inside my gas mask made me up-chuck in it.

I really really suck at golf.

 

[Fixall]

I once sourced an entire FORKLIFT of vintage International Paper canvas Micarta for CPK and decided it was so much fun I'd better go ahead and quit my career with Costco and start a supply business.

There were some other major deciding factors, but that was honestly one of the final nails in the coffin when I decided to go for it.

 

[Synov]

I run a department in an Art museum you know.

When I was a kid, my parents made me play sports. I am a big nerd but they made me play just about every big, American sport you can think of, for most of my life. Well, one day Freshman year in HS, an acquaintance of mine asked me and several of us if we would take a fencing class with him at our local YMCA. He was not the sort of guy who would do new things by himself. So… six of us did. I stuck with it until we finally got to sparring. A switch flipped in my brain like nothing I’ve ever felt and I fell in love. I started going to every possible practice. 7 years later I was a multi-state divisional champion on a full-ride scholarship and #8 in the country. Then I switched schools and dropped it all.

Six years after that I’d graduated and was living in Japan. By dumb luck, the Kendo teacher of the school I was teaching in was a very high ranking, well-known Kendo teacher. I started going to Kendo. Switch flipped again. Soon I was going five nights a week. And about a year after that, strange kendoka started coming to class to spar the foreigner. Word had gotten out. A policeman in my town stopped me and asked if I was the foreigner who did kendo with Kobayashi sensei. I ended up getting a dan rank while I was there and I beat up a lot of higher-ranked kendo guys. Kobayashi sensei and I went to Tokyo to the Budokan to watch nationals. It was awesome.

Anyway, that’s the story I never get to tell. I’m the one person I’ve ever known who has actually, truly done two separate sword-based martial arts. Not coincidentally, this is why the shiv is my favorite CPK. I could close my eyes, extend, and know exactly where the tip is.

That's a really cool story, I think the fencing and kendo communities have a lot to learn from each other. I was president of the fencing club at my university, but never thought about getting into it at the collegiate level. I spent most of my time there working in a neurogenetics lab instead and as a result I've probably killed more rats than most exterminators

 

[FullMetal]

I get into the office 2 hours before everyone and start work. Every 5 minutes I do a set of weights in my office annd go back to email or the phone. Most sets are to burnout. I have bowflex dumbbells that are up to 90 lbs each. After the workout I don’t need to clean up. I don’t sweat like normal people. I also drink 2-3 gallons of water a day and that helps. Coworkers are shocked when they learn most of my exercise is going on in the office because I don’t ever stink. They assume I go to the gym after work.

 

[Mendoman]

A few years after my wife and I got together we moved out of our three bedroom house to an 80 acre property off the grid. There was a trailer/mobile home on the property that proved to be uninhabitable. So, we got an 8x16 foot storage shed to live in while we saved up for and built our current house. We had two mastiff’s and a pug at the time that lived in there with us. My wife was commuting 1 hour and 45 minutes to school to finish her masters degree. It turned out that it took longer than expected to build our house, as many things had a bit of extra degree of difficulty this far out here. It took us 10 years to move into our new home. But it was designed and built by us and it was all an awesome experience. At no point did I wish for my 3 bedroom house, with the neighbors five feet away on either side, back. There are definitely some trade offs but ultimately this is the life for me. Looking out at the next mountain 8 miles away from my porch and not seeing a single other structure is pretty cool. I didn’t grow up this way and there were a lot of things to learn but I feel like a much more well rounded person having learned these lessons.

 

[Lorien]

I have no depth perception.

 

[carnifex knifeworks]

I have an extra lumbar vertebrae. So....technically I'm one of the X-men.

I taught myself to play guitar in high school by learning tons of metallica songs. It paid for most of my college through music scholarships.

Then I got heavy into weightlifting. I read and learned about body building, strength training, and power lifting. I was able to gain close to 60 pounds of lean mass. This helped me realize with enough effort I could teach myself anything by reading, researching, and practicing.

Since then, I have taught myself carpentry skills, how to airbrush, train dogs, paint, and skills to pursue a career in finance and project analysis/management. Currently working on learning how to design/make knives for myself (long ways from that one), cooking at a high level, and pursuing a degree in cybersecurity.

The one thing I can't seem to learn is to keep my mouth shut.....

So my x-men mutant power is learning stuff....still wish I would have gotten magneto's power instead.

P.S. full disclosure, I stopped lifting due to a wrist injury and surgery. I'm pretty out of shape now. Trying to get back into that.