User:Kabaka
From The Inheritance Encyclopedia
Kabaka is currently participating in a competition to win a new laptop and some other cool technology. To help out, watch his cheesy and allegedly bizarre video here! The winner is picked by view count. ;-) WiQuest closed! Alas! I will not get my prize.
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| About the Person | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Kabaka |
| Race: | Dragon ([1]) |
| Birthdate: | April 25, 1989 |
| Age: | 19 |
| Hometown: | Tulsa, Oklahoma |
| Current Location: | Stillwater, Oklahoma |
| Web Site: | kyle.vacantminded.com |
| Retaggr Card: | Here |
| Occupation: | Student, Business Owner |
This page is by no means complete. Expect more in the near future!
I'm Kabaka! (Did you see the page title?) Kabaka is Swahili for "one who behaves as if he were a king (humorous or ironic term)" according to Yale's Living Swahili Dictionary project. I'm a computer programmer, a student (studying for a degree in zoology), a photographer, a disappointing artist, a gamer, and a very avid fan of Eragon.
I'm also the guy that keeps fixing all of the bad grammar on this site. I did it a while after I read the second book and I did it again after the third. But this time, I think I'm here to stay. This place needs more information! And it needs to start sounding like an encyclopedia is supposed to sound. I doubt I can do it, but at least I can help move it in the right direction. And hey... maybe, eventually, I'll make it on the staff here (I wish! No, really, I do.).
Contents |
Offline Life
Before the last few years, most of my life was not offline. My offline life consisted of trips to the kitchen or bathroom. Times have changed... a little.
Employment
From day to day, I do nothing interesting. I get up in the morning (afternoon if I can) and sit at my computer until something necessary--like class--comes up. If I'm not trapped at school, there are two places at which I prefer to be (aside from my computer): Safari's Sanctuary or the Tulsa SPCA. I need a job. Hopefully, I'll be working at the Tulsa SPCA again soon.
Safari's Interactive Animal Sanctuary
I volunteered at Safari's for about four or five months during college last academic year. Once summer kicked in, I moved out to the park itself and stayed on the property, learning everything I could about the animals there. We've got all sorts of great things: lions, tigers, bears, wolves, lemurs, a kangaroo, a zebra, and many more. The list is quite long; we have over 200 animals on the park. All of them are rescued from somewhere. That's how Safari's is different. It is not a zoo, it is a sanctuary for exotic animals. Most of them come to us from private owners that don't know how to raise them (we have a tiger that some guy tried to raise in a condo in Dallas, Texas!).
It's great work. And yes, I got to get in the cage with the tigers every now and then. The cougars were my first. They're pretty easy since we actually raised the two I got to meet.
Everyone there shares the work. Nobody gets paid--the entire thing is run by volunteer work. We all feed everything, clean everything, repair everything that breaks, help the animals that get sick, and give tours to our visitors (they give us the money that keeps us going. That and donations, but that's it!).
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to keep living there after about a month or two. I had run out of money. So, I took the first job I heard about: The Tulsa Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (TSPCA).
TSPCA
Here, I did what was really the same work I did at Safari's, except that I was slightly less worried that the animal might randomly eat my face off when I set down the food (watch out for those capuchins!): I was a kennel worker. Take the dogs out, rinse the kennels, scrub the kennels, rinse them again, and then bleach them. After that, I got to work with and train the dogs for the rest of the day. This includes walking them to help them learn how to walk on a leash, and working on the simple things like sit and down. It's good work.
I plan on going back to start working again in the next week or two. I told the one in charge that I would be back after a little over a month of college. It's been a little over a month and I still haven't gotten back to her. (Admittedly, when I have, I probably won't remember to update this page.) They went ahead and kept me on the payroll... Awesome!
Education
I am currently attending Oklahoma State University. I am studying for a degree in zoology. If it takes me four years to complete my degree, I will be here until spring 2011. Hopefully I'll be gone by then, but we'll have to see.
Hobbies
I love photography. I've taken nearly 20,000 photos in the last five years. It would be more, but work and school have taken a lot of time away from this. Right now, my primary camera is a Kodak P880. It's nothing I love, but it does take photos, and it was a huge improvement over the point-and-shoot I had before it (a Canon SD410).
I've also got a little Canon SD1100 I can carry in my pocket. It seems best for outdoor photos, as indoor photos are always underexposed. And the on-board flash just washes out the important things and leaves heavy shadows everywhere else. The bounce flash I've got for the bigger camera is definitely a win in favor of more professional equipment.
And in light of that, I'm saving up for a newer camera. This time, it's going to be a real DSLR. I'm thinking a Canon EOS. I'll go for the best I can once I decide to go for it, unless someone gets me one for a holiday or something.
Aside from that, though, most of my spare time goes to art in one form or another. A lot of that is digital, lately, but I do sketch every now and then. And then I read. I love reading, though the habit keeps escaping me just when it gets good. Eragon keeps reviving it. This time, I plan on sticking to it, just as I plan on sticking to this web site. Among my favorites are Ender's Game, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (all of them), the Inheritance Cycle, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter (I lost interest after book four, though), and a few others.
Furry
I am a furry. Almost nobody knows what this means. A lot of people seem to have some preconceptions or ideas about the fandom. Very few of these are correct.
Misconceptions
Many people believe that all furries have fursuits. This is entirely incorrect. In a study done on 600 furries, only 18% responded that they own a fursuit.
Another common claim is that all furries are gay men. This is also not true. A significant number of members of the fandom are females or straight males. The majority of furries I have encountered have been bisexual males. This is, however, a very superficial observation; others claim to see the exact opposite. It all depends on who you know.
Fursuit sex as depicted in CSI episode 406 is very, very uncommon. I have yet to meet a furry that claims to have participated in or observed any of such events. They do happen -- even the cosplayers at science fiction conventions do this -- but almost no furries are in the fandom for this activity. I'm sure not.
Conventions
I have only attended one convention in my six or so years of being a part of the fandom. I plan on going to more, but I have to find the money for it.
Oklacon 6 (2008)
I had been planning this convention ever since the first time it happened back in 2002. But back then, I was too young to even bother trying to convince my mother to let me go. When I was 16, I tried anyway. She said "no," claiming that it was unsafe for someone so young to be around older people in a setting like that.
When I started volunteering at Safari's, I heard that they go every year. Better even still was the fact that the convention happens to raise money for the park, usually raising a few thousand dollars. At the time, they had one slot left for another Safari's staff member to come along for free. So I took the opportunity and begged them to let me go. That was all fine and good; I was to attend with Safari's.
Then the incident with my money and needing a job happened, and I stopped volunteering out there. Someone else decided to take my spot. That made sense. So I went as a regular attendee.
And it was amazing. I met some new furs, took 1,500 photos (as of the time of writing this, I have another 1,000 to touch up before any are released), and decided that I am in dire need of a fursuit. And ever since I got back to Stillwater, I keep thinking I see people wearing tails, or animals or anthropomorphic animals on television or posters. It's really driving me insane.
As for the convention itself, it was great. Jeff Goode (rhymes with food), the creator of the Disney series American Dragon: Jake Long as well as the author of plenty of other stuff. He was epic. He made tons of jokes and spoke of things you would not expect the creator of a Disney series to speak of. I'd love to quote him a few times, here, but most of those things aren't safe for a family-friend web site like this one.
There were, if I remember right, 231 attendees. 32 of them had fursuits. That's apparently a rather large number for this size convention. I got a ton of photos of them. But really, I want to attend and be one of the fursuiters rather than the guy taking photos of them. Alas! Fursuits are expensive! The first fur I met was a 14-year-old that had purchased his suit for the bargain price of $300. It wasn't fantastic, but it looked great enough to pay twice that. I know at least one person that makes fursuits, so maybe I can talk them into giving me some kind of a better deal... or some pointers on making my own to save some cash. Yeah right. I'll have to pay someone a ton of money to get it made.
Online Life
Most of my life takes place on the Internet. I know, that's kind of unfortunate. But this page exists on the Internet; without me, it would remain wrought with grammatical errors and devoid of links. Don't correct me. I like feeling purposeful.
Video Games
I have been known to play some games... I don't do it as much as I used to. I have more important things to worry about, like editing the pages on this wiki and reading Eragon a few times every now and then.
World of Warcraft
Yes, I have indeed delved into the awful world that is World of Warcraft. I haven't been on in probably over a year. Yeah, it's fun, and it has some of the most fluid-feeling and authentic "wow, I'm casting a spell!" sensations out there, but it isn't worth that price to me. It makes me sad to think how much extra money I'd have had I not spent it on that game. But I don't regret my time spent playing it.
If you're really curious, check out my main's armory page. Don't expect something impressive.
Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast
This has got to be my favorite game of all time. Back in the day (middle school), I played this game all the time. Really. If I was awake, I was playing. During summer, I played an average of 16 hours a day (based on a week-long study); the most I did was 28 hours, and the least was probably 0, but only for the one day I was gone to my family's family reunion.
I eventually did quit, though. My clan (that game's flavor of a team/guild) dissolved in a matter of one weekend wherein I was studying for a rather difficult exam. By this time, I was in high school, so I did have to dedicate some time to study every year or so. After that, I really lost faith in the game and its community. Nobody every got on my server anymore, and the gaming world champion with whom I had become good friends had since moved on to a then more popular game.
Recently, however, I decided to dig it up and see if anyone still played, and to see how good I was. Sure enough, I hit the top spot in the rankings on the most popular server. It wasn't because I was good, but everyone else was awful. Regardless, I found there were some excellent players among them, and almost everyone in the game had the same story as me: they had all quit a year or two ago, but then came back to see if it was still fun.
So I started up my old clan again, with the same name, same ranks, same rules, and even the precise same server configuration, as I had kept all of that intact on my servers.
I've gotten half as good as I used to be. In the old clan, there were only two people that could beat me, and they were also in the clan. Nobody--literally nobody--could beat us. Sometimes there would be a fluke lose here and there, but then we'd turn into the Hulk of the Jedi and rip them apart until they finally gave up and left. It was awesome, and I loved that feeling. Once I got good a that game, it became easy to gain a feeling of omnipotence of a sort that would make everything seem almost as if it were going so slowly that you could never be hit and never miss. Now, though, I get that feeling maybe once a month. I don't sleep well enough, and my fingers still do not remember their way.
Other Games
I have also played games such as Perfect World, Rappelz, Horizons (oh, I miss that game so much...), Air Rivals, Counter-Strike, Strike-Force, SPORE, and many others. If you ever want to meet up in any games, I probably play or have played them; just drop me a note.
Online Presence
For years, I have made sure that I run at least one web site. I have in the past run at least two web sites that have had an active base of users of at least 500. Those days are gone, lost to inexperience in network security, and more specifically, an unfortunate vulnerability present in one of the packages in use on my server at the time.
Blog
I went through several flavors of blogs before I finally decided to host my own. In the past, I have used:
- deviantART Journal
- Windows Live Spaces
- LiveJournal (Still in use)
- And many others...
So I finally decided that since none of them ever really stuck with me, I'd just host my own since I already have a small hosting company. That ought to give me enough flexibility, I reasoned, that I should be able to keep it updated. It sort of worked. I updated it regularly for a few months, then quit. Then I started again when I got to college. At that point, I kept up with it all year. Then I stopped for the summer. Since the academic year has started again, I have made two entries. One was text, and then I tried an audio blog. It wasn't great, but it was a new experience blogging like that.
Recently, I have also started posting the intro to my blog entries to other services, along with a link to my main blog, so that other services' users can still keep up with my life if they so desire.
See my blog here.
Microblogging
I also have two Twitter accounts.
This one is my general account, though for the most part it will just track my loved tracks on my AudioScrobbler/Last.fm account.
And this one is a personal experiment. I recently acquired one of those little clicking counters that counts from 0 to 9999. I have a few practical uses for it, but the rest of the time, I'm going to track very random things. For example, my first post is the number of cars I saw traveling the opposite direction on the Turnpike while driving from Tulsa back to my dorm in Stillwater.
Galleries
I currently maintain several separate galleries. The best bet for seeing good stuff is deviantART. The repository I host has a lot more in it, though.
Social Networking
I am a member of many social networking web sites. I'm not particularly active on any of them, but I will answer a message on all of them the same day it is left. The best place to find out about my current social online presence is to look here, at my Retaggr card. Retaggr is a great site that lets you centralize all of your contact information. I recommend it, just for the little card you can post anywhere.
For direct links, here you go:
- LiveJournal - I cross-post all posts on my personal blog to this site.
- Public Calendar - Everything I put on my calendar is visible here.
- MySpace - I despised it for years before signing up, but I have one. Friend me if you want; I use it to keep in touch.
- Facebook - This is actually fairly useful for college students like myself. I don't live there, but I pay attention.
- StumbleUpon - This is one of the coolest tools out there. With it, you can find pages never before seen. For Digg users, this is nothing new. I've Stumbled over 33,000 pages so far. I've recently made a point to review and rate every single page I see.
Forums
I've always been a message board freak. That was how I found my place on the Internet. I'm not nearly as active now as I used to be, but there are a few sites on which I occasionally post.
- Lilymud - The Lion King Fan-Art Forum
- Knights Unlimited Clan Forum - This is my Jedi Knight II clan's web site.
- Others; I'll include them later...
IRC
I've recently cut back on the number of channels in which I idle. I took out all of them that had been silent for a week (most), and then the channels in which I had yet to speak.
And then I made one more cut: Shur'tugal's IRC server. The discussion there was always filled with teenage drama, and then one of the ops started speaking ill of a religion immediately after kicking someone else for doing the same thing.
Anyway, my IRC server (irc.vacantminded.com) recently got to link with a larger network, Sinsira. From what I've heard, they're a fairly bad network, full of IRC administrators and operators that don't know what they're doing. From what I can tell, this is entirely true. But all of the security issues were smoothed out before I got there, so it's all good now.
But yes, we linked with them. My server's main channel, #general, has recently been made the network's main channel; so we get plenty of traffic like that. But we need more; come visit! Server information is below (you can still connect via irc.vacantminded.com, but irc.sinsira.net is the round-robin).
| Network Name | Address | My Nickname | Favorite Channels | Web Access |
| Sinsira | irc.sinsira.net | Kabaka | #general, #tech, #opers, #rpg, #furiends, #daezig | irc.vacantminded.com |
| QuakeNet | irc.quakenet.org | Kabaka | #icechat, #worldofraids | |
| Freenode | irc.freenode.net | Kabaka | #wowwiki, ##furry | java.freenode.net |
| Dragon-Realms | irc.dragon-realms.com | Kabaka | #dragons, #geeks | www.dragon-realms.com/index.php?page=chat |
| Draconity.org | irc.draconity.org | Kabaka | #Draconity | www.draconity.org/index.php?action=chat |
Instant Messaging
I'm also an avid user of pretty much every common instant messaging service out there. There is a long history behind my screen names; I'll type that up later. For now, here's a list of services and names.
I've marked some of them "preferred." By this, I mean that if you use that service and wish to message me, I like it if you send your message to the marked name. All messages on all services come to me through one program, so it won't make a huge difference. But still. ;-)
| Service Name | Screen Name / Nickname | Preferred |
| AIM | KabakaDragon | * |
| AIM | KabakaLion | |
| AIM | EnderWiggin1989 | |
| ICQ | 226333053 | |
| Yahoo! Messenger | KabakaDragon | * |
| Yahoo! Messenger | KabakaLion | |
| Windows Live Messenger (MSN) | TheLionKing@cox.net | * |
| GTalk (Google Talk) (XMPP) | kabakadragon@gmail.com | |
| Jabber (Jabber.org) (XMPP) | Kabaka@jabber.org | |
| MySpace IM | kylejohnon@tulsacoxmail.com | |
| Facebook Chat | kyj@okstate.edu | |
| LiveJournal Chat (XMPP) | kabakadragon@livejournal.com |
Web Cam
I used to have an amazing little system set up that allowed people to view me and a few areas around my home. I know, it sounds crazy and creepy, but it was actually kind of neat. And people seemed to have fun. You could chat with me in real time, turn on and off some lights, and even operate a pan/tilt/zoom camera (and the range of zoom and motion was pretty good). But since I've been going to college, that system has been taken offline. I'm not there, so it seems silly to transmit images of an empty room. And I can't really set it up here since we can't run servers.
But I do have one thing I use occasionally: Yahoo! Live. Check it out if you're curious. I might be on, but it's more likely that I'm asleep, in class, or just didn't remember to open the page.
See the exciting video here. Maybe.
Yet alas! Yahoo! Live will be going away this December. Do your part to stop it.
