You: Crazy you, 07/26/99

By Beth Schultz
Network World, 7/26/99

As twilight deepens and dusk falls upon the city, a vampire steps forth from her lair. Her plush, blood-red gown swirls about her legs as she hurries along the darkened streets. One look at her pale face, red lips and tangle of long, dark hair sends shivers down the back of the unsuspecting. What godforsaken corner of the earth loosed this wretched creature of the night?

Doubt if you will, but this mistress of the dark spends her daylight hours tending the local network at the Social Security Administration's Office of Hearings and Appeals (OHA) in Fargo, N.D. She's Trish Lewis, a Network World reader who is absolutely crazy about her hobby.

Lewis dons her Gothic garb to get into character for a live-action role playing (LARP) game called "Vampire: The Masquerade." Besides dressing their parts, the players use props, settings and music to create atmosphere. They play out personal story lines within a framework laid out by official storytellers.

Lewis says her love of LARPing evolves from an interest in acting and science fiction, a common LARP theme. She opted for playing a vampire rather than a Trekkie to cater to her "artsy" side, says the 40-year-old systems administrator, noting that vampire dress is more in line with the vintage clothing she favors for work.

Lewis has been LARPing for three years, mostly as a ninth-generation vampire who has Irish roots. The action takes place in private homes or public places, such as the town square or a nightclub. Lewis says it took some "chutzpah" to join her first game, the type of nerve that has served her well professionally, too.

She began work at the OHA 10 years ago in a clerical position. Six months later, the person in the brand-new systems administrator job quit suddenly. Lewis took over and has been responsible for the office's computer software, hardware and network requirements ever since. Recently, she oversaw OHA's conversion from NetWare to Windows NT Server.

By the light of day

While Lewis turns to the dark Fargo streets for LARPing, others of you yearn for clear-blue skies and sun-drenched days to pursue your passions. Hiking, golfing and biking were among the more popular activities mentioned by the 450 of you who told us about your hobbies in our first You survey. Gardening also received a fair number of hits, as did a variety of water and winter sports.

In all, 38% of you listed an outdoors activity among your favorite hobbies. Take Sandy Joren, a network architect with Lucent in Warren, N.J. He spends much of his free time casting a fishing line and hoping he'll reel it back with a big old bass hooked.

Joren is a Network World reader who is quite serious about his hobby. He and a buddy fish the American Bass Association's (ABA) yearly team tournament, which takes them to rivers including the Hudson in upstate New York, the Potomac in Maryland and the Delaware in Pennsylvania.

Joren has come a long way from fishing farm ponds during his boyhood in Georgia, but the 47-year-old says has not yet reached his ultimate goal.

"I want my own fishing show on Saturdays," he says, laughing.

While Joren knows he'll probably never win his fortune fishing, he does hope to capture a spot in the ABA National Team Tournament, the year-end classic that nets the top team a fully rigged bass boat. Winning a chance to compete in the event is a matter of being one of the top 10 teams competing in 10 or so larger ABA tournies, each of which typically draws between 60 and 90 boats.

Joren's hobby takes him away from home each weekend from the end of April through late fall. The competitions take place on Sundays, but Joren and his partner hit the rivers on Saturday to get a feel for where the fish are at high tide and when the sun's at its peak, for example. While it remains to be seen whether his devotion will earn Joren a chance at the national tournament, it's not likely he'll give up the dream. He shows consistent commitment to other pursuits, including music and networking.

Joren has been in the network business since 1984 when he joined AT&T, from which Lucent was spun off. For the past two years, he has been part of a team responsible for planning network resources. The team uses modeling tools to assess how the deployment of an application will affect Lucent's enterprise network or why an existing application is performing poorly across the network.

Joren came to networking after 10 years of playing in a professional band. Now, for fun, he's into a six-year stint playing electric bass for a blues band and a four-year engagement playing upright bass in a bluegrass band; he sings in both.

Racier challenges

Joren is not the only Network World reader who has seen his childhood sport turn into a serious adult pursuit. For Mark Klein, a systems administrator with X/Net Associates in Fairport, N.Y., the sport of choice is motocross racing.

At age 3, while fishing with his father, the 28-year-old Klein cast his line and snagged a minibike that someone had tossed in the river: "My father got it out, fixed it up and, ever since then, I've been in love."

That love turned competitive when Klein reached the age of 12. He climbed on top of a new Yamaha YZ80 and hit his first racing course. Klein loved the action and raced away at this grueling sport for the next six or so years. Motocross is not for the faint-hearted; racers speed on difficult courses carved out of the natural terrain. Add a few man-made obstacles to test a rider's skill, and you've got a strenuous race.

Klein decided against racing while in college, but a few years after graduation he heeded the track's call again. He got his groove back quickly.

Last year, he won the chance to race against 41 other riders for a week last August at the American Motorcyclists Association's National Motocross Championships - "the mecca of motocross racing for amateurs," Klein says. He finished the week 26th in the 250cc amateur class races for riders 25 and older. That's not bad, considering that 2,200 qualified riders started the season.

Klein's overall racing goal is to turn expert and start making money rather than simply pouring the green stuff into his sport. Klein estimates he spent $15,000 on racing last season.

Klein says his work supporting and maintaining a major auto finance company's paperless network will help him meet that goal: "From the X/Net philosophy of being meticulous, I've learned how to put together a plan of attack and how to stay with it."

Likewise, Klein applies his "nothing's impossible" racing attitude toward his job.

"Someone may come up with a far-out suggestion, and some people will turn their heads and say, 'You're crazy.' But not me," he says.