Why do you call yourself Jodeman?

MiniMe
Jodeman is a take-off on my name: Jody. Honestly, I can't take credit for coming up with it.

The first time I was referred to as "Jodeman" was back in 1993. I attended a dinner banquet in Toronto. I was walking through a parking lot to the building where the dinner banquet was to be held when I heard the familiar voice of my friend, Alvin, calling out "Jodeman!" That was the first moment I was ever referred to as Jodeman. I've been using it since then. Even folks at work occasionally call me Jodeman. Before that, it was an occasional Jodester. Wilson calls me Jodes. Jeannie still occasionally calls me by a nickname that I acquired back in Elementary School but you won't find out what it is here. *grin* Cindi used to call me One Jay at one point (don't ask).. Jody or Jode by the majority of others & Joe by my oldest friends. It feels kind of wierd when someone that I haven't known that long calls me Joe.

Personal Stuff.

  • Real Name Jody Wong
  • Chinese Name ¶À ¼y Â×
  • Gender Male
  • Birthdate May 28th, 1970 (Send me a Gift!)
  • Age Do the math!
  • Height 5'1" (when I've slept well the night before.)
  • Weight 139 lbs (at times up to 144 lbs fully dressed.)
  • Eyes Brown Hair: Black (like 95% of other Asians.)

Miscellaneous Stuff you might want to make note of...

  • Addresses for E-mails - jodeman1@hotmail.com
  • Beverage I miss drinking the most - Safari Club Tea (Green cans) I brought back 6 cans of it when I returned from Vancouver. All but one are now gone. I've found a substitute: "No Name Brand" Peach Ice Tea (concentrated)
  • Book I've been looking for since 1983 - The Companion - by Scott Siegal (Bantam Publishing - "The Dark Forces" Series) It's a 15-book series that's an early version of R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series. I have 14/15 of the books. Whenever I'm in a used book store, I'll keep one eye on the constant look for this book. If you have it, I'll buy it! It's been out-of-print for about almost 20 years. Amazon.com found a copy for me some time ago through their network of booksellers. The asking price was about $21US. It was 7x the original selling price of $3US. I was unwilling to pay, with the exchange, over $30 Canadian for a 15-year old $4 book.
  • Cars
    1993 Kelly Blue Chevrolet Corsica
    		 2001 Silver Honda Civic DX-G 4-door Sedan
  • Chinese Zodiac Sign - Dog
  • Coke or Pepsi? - Back in 1994, I took the Pepsi Challenge. Being a Pepsi drinker, I easily chose the Pepsi over the more acidic & fizzy Coke. I have the card to prove it.
  • Favourite Baseball Player - Andres Galarraga
  • Favourite Breakfast cereal - Quaker Oats' Corn Bran
  • Favourite Cartoon/Animation - Aladdin & Robotech (TV Series)
  • Favourite Coffee Place - Ho-Ho Cafe in Montreal's Chinatown. (now closed)
  • Favourite Comic Strip - Tie between Calvin & Hobbes & Bloom County
  • Favourite Eye used for winking - Right eye
  • Favourite Finger used for pointing - Right index finger
  • Favourite Food - Oysters, lobster and my absolute favourite.. scallops
  • Favourite Forms of Time Wasting - NTN Trivia & working on the d-boat team's website.
  • Favourite Hand used for Drinking - Left hand
  • Favourite Hand used for Waving - Right hand
  • Favourite Hand used for Writing - Right hand
  • Favourite Hot-Dog Places - Was VALENTINES in Laval. Jenny had my order ready before I finished ordering. Not sure if there's a connection but after she left, there were no more line-ups. Then there's La Belle Province on St. Martin Blvd in Laval. They're fast & pile on the fries. Haven't been there in ages. I've discovered the big Kosher hot dogs at Costco. A bargain at $1.99 with a drink.
  • Favourite Motivational Speaker - Les Brown
  • Favourite Movies - Rocky IV, White Nights, The Joy Luck Club, 13th Warrior
  • Favourite Movies - Chinese - The Heroic Trio, Once a Thief (w/Chow Yun-Fat.. not the stupid TV Show), Supercop & any Jet Li movie.
  • Favourite Montreal Summer Festivals - The annual International JazzFest & also the Annual Montreal Fant-Asia film fest. In recent years, they've shown a lot of non-Asian movies which don't interest me. I didn't attend any movies the last few summers. The first year, they lots of kung-fu movies. I attended over a dozen movies that year.
  • Favourite Season - Summer.. nothing beats the atmosphere of all those Montreal Festivals.
  • Favourite TV show - Tie between The Frugal Gourmet & Due South
  • Favourite Vegetable - Brussel Sprouts
  • Favourite Video Games - I have no clue how many quarters I pumped into Bubble Bobble, Galaga, Smash TV, Rabbit Punch, Timber & Xenophobe over the years. Most can't be found in Montreal anymore. When I was living in Vancouver in Summer '95, I found Bubble Bobble at the arcade & the full-size SmashTV at the theatre in the Metrotown mall. I went a bit early to a few movies just to play some SmashTV.
  • Highest Bowling Score to Date - 151 points (June 2nd, 1999) On average, I go bowling about 1-2 times a year.
  • Hobbies - Collecting pins, keychains & other little "knick-knacks" (as Selene calls them). Thanks to thank Anne for the keychains from as far away as Africa, South Africa & Australia. Thanks to Cindi for the New Orleans keychain.
  • Languages
    • English - With some Canadian thrown in, eh.
    • French - I can understand quite a bit but can't speak it as well as I would like.
    • (Chinese)
      • Cantonese - Again.. can't speak it as well as I would like.
      • Mandarin - I used to be between Beginners Level 1 & Intermediate. I've regressed to Beginners due to disuse.
      • Taishanese - Yet another dialect of Chinese. My 1st spoken language. I speak it worse than some.. but better than many.
    • I know a few phrases in Spanish, Greek, Italian & Thank you in Portuguese.
  • Marital Status - Extremely Single
  • Most FreeCell Wins in a Row - 48 (I got 47 in my last run at this record.)
  • Most FreeCell Losses in a Row - 2
  • Nationality - Canadian, eh.
  • Places that I've visited - Boston, China, Hong Kong, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Maine, Mexico, Montreal, New Hampshire, Niagara Falls, Ottawa, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Taiwan, Toronto, Vancouver, Vermont, Victoria
  • Places I want to visit again - Hong Kong, Taiwan, California & Seattle
  • Place I've never been that everyone else has - New York City
  • Snack that I eat the most - leftovers
  • Strangest places I've ever fallen asleep
    • Bench on the 2nd floor of the Chientan Youth Activity Center. I woke up the next morning.
    • Long weekend.. I went to Toronto on my birthday in '94 for a BBQ. Monday, I spent 6 hours exploring downtown Toronto on foot until it was time for my train back to Montreal. The night I got home, I went out to meet someone. Was only going to meet her for coffee. Walked in at 7am. Had a class at 9am. Sophie jokingly said I was paying respect to the teacher cause I kept bowing my head as I nodded off. I think I bumped into a few people as I nodded off standing up on the subway ride home at 5pm.
    • One time coming home late, I nodded off on the bus ride home. I woke up at the Metro Station.. the same place where I got on. Apparently, I had taken a round trip to the end & back again. Still wondering where that missing hour went.
    • See last Embarrassing Moment below.
  • Typing Skills - Last I checked.. which was some years ago.. 45wpm (after eliminating typos.) 28wpm if I incorporate the numbers.
  • Zodiac Sign - Gemini

My first Website

This is my website in the early days. I'm sure it's filled with lots of broken links. I've added a few things to it since 1996. I was just starting out & didn't know much more than the basic HTML tags at the time.

Can I link my page to yours?

Sure.. just add the following code to your webpage:   <a href="http://www.oocities.org/jodeman.geo">Jodeman's Homepage</a>

As a favour, please drop me an email to let me know that you've added a link to me? I'll add a return link to your page from my Links to Me webpage.

Where are you located in this big world of ours?

I was born in Montreal. For the first four years, I lived on St. Dominique Street in Montreal. In 1974, I moved to LaSalle (a small suburb of Montreal), Quebec, Canada where I've lived since save for one summer when I lived in Vancouver & one summer that I was on the Study Tour to Taiwan.

Why does your e-mail say Vancouver if you live in Montreal?

You have no idea how many times I've been asked this question. In 1995, I spent a good part of the summer living in Vancouver. While I was there, I signed up with the Vancouver Regional Free-Net Association now called The Vancouver CommunityNet in order keep in touch with friends here in Montreal. At the time of my return to Montreal, I was recieving so much e-mail in Vancouver that I decided to keep the e-mail address alive. I still telnet there every few weeks. If you wish to send me e-mail.. sending to jody_wong@hotmail.com would be your best bet of reaching me the quickest. If, by some miracle, you still have one of my older e-mail addresses.. I don't check them anymore so it may be a while before I get your mail.

So.. what IS it that you do?

I get asked this more often than one would expect. Most of the time, I just say a computer technician & leave it at that. Sometimes, I will go through the trouble of explaining that I work mainly on UNIX platforms with a heavy focus on Silicon Graphics (SGI) workstations & peripherals. Sometimes, I will get see a blank look on their face and realize that:
  1. My explanation is a little too technical for people who are familiar only with PCs & MACs.
  2. They've never heard of SGI & I have to explain that they were computers used to create the special effects for movies such as The Lawnmower Man, Men in Black, Jurassic Park, X-Men, Chicken Run, etc.

    Not long ago, I met someone who worked for Discreet Logic. It was funny when she described her job. She "worked with software that was used to create the special effects for movies such as Jurassic Park, Titanic,...".

  3. they don't give a hoot & I'm just wasting my breath.
Much of the time, I just say I'm a computer technician working for a "computer reseller".

Much (but by far not all) of my main tasks at work are listed, in brief, in the online version of my resume under B&B Solutions Inc.

My Computers

Home Computers
 For years, I'd been getting by with a *faint* SIDUS 386-SX with a whopping 8mb of RAM with a mind-boggling 85mb Hard drive. It originally came with an incredible 2mb RAM. It used to contain a Zoltrix 2400 baud modem before I gave it away & bought a lightning fast Zoltrix 14.4 modem.

The following has been given to my sister to use:

Digital Celebris FX-2 Pentium 166mhz
16mb SDRAM
S3 ViRGE/GX Graphics
2mb Video Memory
256KB fixed pipeline-burst Secondary Cache
2.1 Gb Quantum Fireball System Disk
Crystal CS4236B PnP Audio System CODEC Built-in Sound Card
Built-in 10Base-T Network Ethernet connection
Running Win98 & Redhat Linux 6.2

Additions:

I've partitioned the 6.4gb disk drive with 4Gb for Win98 & 2gb for Redhat 6.2 LINUX. The 2.1gb drive is used for back-ups & MP3 storage. I had Win2000 Professional installed for a little while but my Twinbridge Chinese software is incompatible so I'm back to Win98 SE.

With a $35 D-Soft Ethernet card & a $10 20-foot twisted network cable, I networked the systems together. Aside from file & printer sharing, I haven't decided what else to do with this setup yet. I tried replacing the motherboard on the 386 to upgrade it to a 486. I have the CPU but the motherboard is no good.

The Latest System acquired Dec. 2000

After working with a Pentium 166 for two years, I decided it was time for a change. The new system...

AMD Thunderbird 1.2 Ghz 266FSB RTL
MSI SKTA K7T Turbo Limited Edition Red Motherboard
917K Mid Tower ATX Case 300W
ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon
256mb SDRAM DIMM PC133
Audio On-board
GVC v90 PCI SOHO SOFT Modem
Panasonic Floppy
Seagate 30GB 7200 IDE (ATA 100)
Sony 52x IDE CD-Rom
Win98 Second Edition
KBTECH Keyboard English 114
Logitech Scroll Mouse
Cyber Acoustics CA-3060 Speakers with Sub-Woofer

I swapped the 52x CD-Rom and put the CD-Burner into the new system. So far, it's been running with no problems.

I switched to DSL back in late 2001. With a Linksys 4-port router, I linked the three systems together to share the same DSL connection. I added a 3Com 3C905b-TX 10/100baseT network card to the new system. Got a good deal from work on the router & network card.

I got a system from work a little while ago:

  • SGI Indy, R4600 133mhz SC, 96mb Memory, 8-bit Graphics, IndyCam, 2gb disk running Irix 6.5. I'm using one of the German SGI keyboards we had no use for to use on the system.
It's not top of the line & the 8-bit graphics are kind of sucky but it's nice for playing around with to get to know the Irix Operating System better. It has a built-in 10-BaseT Ethernet connection. I've taken the network cable off cause the new system doesn't have a network card.. yet. Currently, they share the same 20" monitor (which has both HD15 & 13W3 connectors). Once I get the Indy to successfully surf the web using the Pentium as a gateway, I may hook up my old 14" monitor to the Pentium.

What is the point of this website?

Whatever...

What is the point of this FAQ?

I doubt very many people will read this. I don't know.. kill time?

How much time do you spend on this website?

Not as much as I used to.

How often do you update this website?

Not a heck of a lot as you can see from the "Date updated".I haven't added any major sections in years.

Shouldn't you get a hobby?

Most probably.

So.. why don't you?

Bah...

Embarrassing Moments

  • When visiting a museum some years ago, I came very close to knocking a Triceratops skull off of it's stand. Luckily no one saw. That would've been something to write home about. I shudder to think of what might have happened if I did.
  • One time I passed out at Marcus' place during a party. I don't quite remember much of that night after a certain point. Marcus & his shooters of straight gin &.. what was in that other bottle? I think it was rum. Enough was enough when I involuntarily sprayed the last shooter back out. I remember spraying the table & part of Marcus' arm. Sorry Marcus! *grin* Last thing I remember doing was going downstairs, plopping myself down onto the sofa & talking to Edith. The next thing I remember was waking up the next morning feeling quite *bleah*. It wasn't until the next party that I saw the photos. Apparently, a half dozen or so cookies were placed onto strategic areas of my person. Someone was even nice enough to put a bowl on my head. To this day, I still haven't found out who did it. Others took turns posing for photos with yours truly. One of my finer moments. Marcus got a pretty good photo of me & the cookies. Part of the photo is blurred by request.
  • The Miniskirt.. but we won't get into that. *grin*
  • Fall of 1994, I joined a dozen friends for the $10 All You Can Eat & Drink chili/beer special at the Mad Hatter bar. Some two hours later, I left to join some people to see Star Trek: Generations. I don't remember much of that night but I do remember complaining loudly before the movie started about the guy with the big head who sat in the seat right in front of me.. effectively blocking much of the screen. (Not something I'd normally do. *grin*) He must have heard me (along with everyone within a 10 foot radius) cause he ducked down in his seat soon after I started complaining. It didn't really matter cause I passed out about five minutes into the movie. I woke up in time to see the closing credits. Essentially, I paid $8 to take a two hour nap.
    [Epilogue: Mad Hatter's killed the Chili/Beer special not long after that night due to the 15 pitchers that we ordered at "last call".]
  • A long, bad evening.. traffic light.. cops.. A hair's breath away from getting arrested & losing my license.. but we won't get into that. Not one of my prouder moments.

"It takes a true friend to remember an embarrassing event & still make fun of you years later for it." - (c)1993 Jodeman.

What do you look like?

I have a bunch of pictures of me & the people in my life on the 'Net. You can check them out in Da Foto Exhibit.

How did you manage to get so many visitors to your homepage?

I have one counter but it's on four of my most popular pages. My Due South page, Andres Galarraga Fan Page, NTN Trivia & Chientan Study Tour page. Every time someone visits one of those pages, the counter is set off. I have it set that users who visit different parts of my page during their visit won't set it off multiple times. Each visit is counted ONCE even if you visit all of those other pages. I'd estimate that most of my visitors come in thru my SLUG's NTN Corner & Andres Galarraga Fan Page. My subpages are more popular than my main homepage.

Jodeman's Website proudly announces that it received it's 10,000th visitor on Dec 26th, 1998 since the counter was created in April, 1996.

Another popular site of mine is a website I created called Jodeman's SGI & Stuff. It's devoted to Silicon Graphics which is what I deal with daily at work. The site registered about 600 visitors in the first week (Mid-August, 1998) that it was up. I get a lot of hits both on that website & it's two mirrors at http://sgi.mesa-sys.com & http://unixology.com/jodeman despite the fact that I barely advertise the websites. The mesa-sys.com mirror site is by far, my most popular.

It's ME.. or is it?

In September '96, I recieved this historic e-mail from a Jody Wong from Down Under in Sydney, Australia.

Date: Fri, 27 Sep 1996
From: jody
To: Jody Wong
Subject: Great name

Just thought I'd say hello to someone with the same name as me.   :-)

Up until then, I always thought I was the only one in this big world of ours. When I saw his name on the e-mail, I thought that one of my e-mails bounced back or it was an e-mail from either Jody Chin of New York or Jody Cole of Texas. It's strange enough finding another Jodeman out there let alone another Jody Wong. Jody Cole registered the www.jodeman.com domain but he hasn't done anything with it yet.

I've found more of my namesakes living in the US & a few from abroad using some Online White Pages & ICQ Search. Some years ago, the only ones that popped up on searches were myself & my namesake from Whale Beach, Australia. Nowaday, more & more are popping out of the woodwork. Comparing notes with my Australian self, it's a little scary to find that we have many things in common.

Jody Wong of Australia
You're probably pretty tired of seeing pictures of me all over this site by now. Here's a photo that my Aussie buddy sent me of himself a little while ago. Look at that mess. Aiya.. I guess some things are the same all around the world. My desk is just as messy. heh..

Jody Wong's of the World
Name Geographical Location ICQ Number Website
Jody Wong Montreal, Quebec, Canada Me 4978811 Website
Jody Wong Whale Beach (Sydney), Australia 196201, 9001505
Jody Wong Auckland, New Zealand 15079296, 27564436, 32288011
Jody Wong Hong Kong 4211840
Jody Wong Ontario, Canada 11532729 Website
Jody Wong Hong Kong 31509459
Jody H. M. Wong Hong Kong Website
Jody Wong Fremont, CA USA
Jody Wong LA, CA USA
Jody Wong SG, USA
Jody Wong USA 22684712
Jody Wong Posen, MI, USA
Jody Wong Tuscon, AZ, USA
Jody Wong Union City, CA, USA
Jody Wong Prairieville, LA, US VI 7310927
Jody Wong Ontario, Canada
Jody Wong Shatin, New Territories, HK
Jody Wong n/a 18361346
Jody B. Wong Columbus, MS, USA
Jody G. Wong Hayward, CA, USA
Jody L. Wong Pittsburg, CA, USA
Jody S. Wong Stafford, TX, USA
Not Jody Wong's but close enough...
Jodi Wong n/a 14236965
Jodi Wong Hong Kong, China
Jodi Wong Renton WA, USA
Jodi Wong New York, NY, USA
Jodie Wong Sydney, Australia 19772691
Jodie Wong-Hayes Kingman, AZ, USA
Jodie Wong Sugar Land, TX, USA
Jodie Wong Fair Oaks, CA, USA
Jodie Wong Honolulu, USA Website
Jodie Wong Fort Lauderdale, FL, USA