It's Dutch, I think. I don't speak it. I just typed it off the back of a CD player (I love those stickers). Sure beats having to come up with a really deep or clever opening line.

I'm a born-and-raised island girl, growing up in a typically smothering and nosy Japanese household in Kailua. A small, painfully boring town, save for the odd brawl between Marines and beach parties.

As a wee lass, I didn't go for the outdoors thing. The other kids spit on me and there weren't any sidewalks on our block (Marines speed, too). Besides, my mom says I fell out of a tree when I was 6. That day, she said, I started insisting on sleeping on the floor rather than on a bed... a habit I still have. I can't remember the trauma, but it also explains my current fear of heights.

Though I had my Barbie phase -- and a Lego phase that has yet to subside -- computers have been in my life longer than I can remember (among my earliest surviving memories involves hiding in a hamper after spilling juice on a keyboard).

Before moving away, my dad got me (read: himself) an Atari 2600, then a bad-ass Tandy with a mud-brown monochrome monitor. Those toys saved me from continuing other not-so-noble hobbies, like eating soap and screaming for no particular reason. The Atari also got me my first boyfriend, a smelly kid named Jon who kissed me for a chance to play "Combat."

Lord knows where that boy is now.

My partners-in-crime, pretty much ever since, have been Macintosh boxes, starting with the cutest of them all, a Mac SE named HAL. After five years with a Mac IIsi -- which saw me from MacWrite to Netscape 3.01 -- I stepped up to a satisfyingly mediocre PowerMac 7100.

I don't remember much about attending Kalaheo High School, except that the boys weren't terribly cute and that I got out of taking a class my senior year by being a teacher's aide in a typing lab. That was where I fully cultivated my deep-seated hatred of Microsoft.

Like any good kid, I went straight to college after graduating. Technically, I'm a student at the Manoa campus of the University of Hawai`i, but the number of credits I carry is constantly declining and the date of my graduation is creeping towards 2010.

I also wander through a variety of part-time jobs, and when no one is looking I take a smidgen of income from little old ladies who buy computers from Sears and need help making the best of their mistake.

Of course, even the academically enslaved have hobbies. Mine include (obviously) wandering the net. I often scan USENET, and have since the days alt.sex was actually worthwhile. I have high hopes for the World Wide Web, my own contribution being Open Pages and my rambling diary.

When I've had my fill of computers (it does happen occasionally), I like hiking, sitting on the beach (living in Waikiki has its advantages), taking in flicks, wandering clubs and concerts (what few worthwhile shows we get here), reading, listening to music, and eating terribly unhealthy food.

There's not much more to tell about me (at least here -- you'll find these pages contain an excess of my ramblings). Of course, if you're still unsatisfied or curious, you could always ask me.

(Now... where were we?)