Hello! My name is Albejorn. You… probably gathered that by now. 🙂
Current Status
I have 5 years experience as a Sr. Data & Applied Scientist in the video games industry, and another 20 years experience as a Sr. Software Engineer/Architect. I suppose that math makes me a grey muzzle… and having grandkids can certainly add a few grey hairs!
My hobbies include Photography, Photogrammetry, (learning to) Dance, Fursuit building, and Fursuit electronics. I wish I had more time to explore my passions of writing and art.
Ancient History
My origins go back to the dawn of the Internet, an era of text-based MUDs and MUCKs. We moved to this tiny town called Sutherlin, Oregon when my dad passed away in ’85: We were city slickers from San Jose that bought a 75 acre ranch with the life insurance money, and spent the winter with Jack Frost on the inside of the windows because the green firewood wouldn’t start. At least we had sleeping bags for extra warmth! >.<
Mom married someone that could start a fire, and I was home-schooled for 3 years (mom had been a certified teacher in California). When I reentered the public school system in 7th grade, I was utterly bored even in the advanced placement classes.
No, no. I don’t think you understand boredom.
My town didn’t have the Internet.
I wrote my own BBS software for my Apple ][e, and explored FidoNet. I read The Whole Internet User’s Guide and Catalog from cover-to-cover, so I’d be ready the moment I had access to a Unix shell with commands like Archie, Veronica, Gopher, and ViolaWWW.
I did have access to Wired Magazine. In the second year of printing, they published Johnny Manhattan Meets the Furry Muckers. My world changed.
“When I first stumbled into FurryMuck … I figured it was a very wry college-kid joke thing. It’s not. It’s quite serious. The place is at least as big and well-defined as LambdaMOO, with an apartment complex where 190 people live (if you want housing here, there’s a waiting list) many bucolic parks and lakes, a taxi system, and underground caverns. It has a huge following, with hundreds of players who occasionally meet in real life for conferences in places like Philadelphia.”
The rest of the article is… not the greatest, there’s a lot of jumbled conflation of topics going on, and it focuses entirely on the sexual aspects of FurryMuck. It is a surprisingly relevant exploration of personal boundaries in a digital age.
The most important part: I finally knew there was a name for what I felt.
I was a furry. And… there were others like me, out there in the world.
I promised myself that I would track down this Furry domain as soon as I moved to a town with internet. That happened later in ’94.
Furtastic Journey
Oh, my. OH MY.
My 28.8kbps modem squealed, and I was connected direct to the internet over PPP. I figured out how download Mozilla, and I was off and running.
Remembering my book learning, I fired up Telnet, where you had to remember what you were typing since other people would interrupt the line of text as you typed. I made my way to FurryMUCK, since that was in the article. From there I discovered Tapestries. But my real friendships were formed at SocioPolitical Ramifications and TigerMUCK.
Oh, the romps that were had. The asynchronous spontaneous improvisational skits with a dozen participants in the main park were legendary. I had a carrot cake that would bound around smurgling furs, and programmed a multitude of props on the fly as a story unfolded. I made a lasting, cherished friendship with Croc (Audiodile).
My natural circadian rhythm took over, and I would awake around 5PM, and be online until 10AM. For three months of bliss, I would hold four or five simultaneous conversations and get to know so many.
Albejorn shakes herself a bit from her reverie.
Oh, my, indeed. I’ve rambled quite a bit for a simple About page. So I’ll wrap up: My savings ran out, so I got a job in tech support that transitioned rapidly to software development. I met who I thought would be my life partner, we married, had several children, and thought I needed to be mundane to raise them well.
After 22 years… well, I woke up. I’ll have to tell you more some day. 🙂
Hah. This was posted April 30th, 2018. It’s now 2021… so very, very much has changed. Some day, I’ll share more.