Although I hardly knew sensei, he has done much to help - nay, to save - more than one of my friends, and in so doing he has helped me as well.

/me misses sensei.

email - nrussell@acsu.buffalo.edu
AIM - Pakaran2 - feel free to IM if I'm logged in; when busy I log out
Real Name - Nathan Russell
School - University at Buffalo
Major - Computational Physics

Things to node:

Finish the album Wood
• stick shift

Okay, I may as well explain - or try to - where my handle comes from.

A long time ago, in 1997 or 1998, when I was a high school student, I decided to join a MUSH. The problem was choosing a name - the culture to which my character would belong had very strict naming standards. As such, I combined the names of a few of the existing characters with my own (Nathan) and came up with Pakaran.

Some time later, I needed to register at a website and couldn't think of a username, so I used Pakaran again. The same with AIM, Slashdot (I'm known as Pakaran2 on those, actually), my now-defunct Hotmail account and many, many other RPGs. The original MUSH character is long-since abandoned, and probably deleted by now.

Oh yeah - what I don't tell very many people. The original character was an evil priest, a member of an order that ruled their civilization primarily by calling divine fire on everyone who disagreed.

And now my entire online existence is named after that particular character. That says nothing good about me, I'm afraid.