Who's this guy?

Hey everyone, its been a few days since I last posted and in that time I've been wrapping up details on the project I eluded to. For my readers in the bay area, if I'm not already in contact with you, drop me a line if you're interested in participating in the beta testing of this project. If so, I'll give you the url with all the information as well as answer any questions you may have during the process.

In the meantime, there are a couple of games coming up in the next few weeks, including HvZ at SFSU, Jericho and my own games of HvZ in Lafayette Park and Fort Mason. I'll be attending and posting about SFSU HvZ (not sure if I'll go to my games though), but sadly I won't be able to make Jericho this month as the games are happening when I'm at work. But what about the man attending the games? Who's this guy? I haven't done a post like this yet, but I don't feel I can go on without doing so. So without further adue, this is me:

Q: Where are you from and where do you live?
A: I was born and raised in San Francisco, where I currently live. I grew up over on Cortland avenue, about a block up from Mission street, went to school in the Mission District and until I went to high school, pretty much did everything in that neighborhood.

Q: Where is your family from and do you have any siblings?
A: My mother is from Belmont, a smaller town in the Peninsula. My father was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland and lived there until his early 30's when he came to the US to play music. He met my mom in San Francisco and not long after he went back to Belfast, she went out there, found him and they got married. My older sister Siobhan (they really hit us heavy with the Irish names) was the immediate product of this union, with me coming along a couple of years later.

Q: How long have you been Nerfing?
A: Just since the start of this year. The project I cryptically alluded to above steered me in the direction of the NIC, which manifested in the form of Jericho. I found out about it on meetup.com, but just missed a game by day or two. I was already looking to host games, but I needed to play first. That three hours of game play hooked me. I created my meetup.com group the next day and hosted my first game a couple of weeks later. Ever since I've been organizing games, managing a Facebook community, blogging and creating projects and  then speaking of them cryptically. As of the last month or so, if I go a couple of days without doing something Nerf related, that's a pretty long time.

Q: Have you always been such a nerd?
A: Yes, but I didn't always know it or necessarily acknowledge it. As funny as it may sound, in the late 80's and early 90's when I was first coming in contact with the world, San Francisco wasn't the friendliest town to nerds. At least in my neighborhood it wasn't. When I was a kid, I was too young to know that I was nerding out hardcore when I was memorizing the wing span of birds (subsequently ambushing my mom and bombarding her with the facts), but as I got older and started trying to be a cool guy like all the other guys around me, I noticed how nerdy I truly was. When we were playing basketball,  I would casually discuss how many defensive rebounds or assits a player averaged a season. Or when I was writing graffiti I would talk about to my friends about guys who tagged not even in San Francisco, but back in New York a few years before we were born. In neither instance did I get anything but stares (at best), so I realized I needed to keep my nerdness in check if I wanted to be cool like my buddies.

I started nerding out even harder when I hit 15/16, sitting down and devouring history books in a couple of days, week after week, for the rest of my teenage years. I crossed the nerd threshold, stopped caring about being cool and just did my thing.

Q: What is your favorite Nerf blaster?
A: The Strongarm. Any time I've ever needed it, its served me very well. Its easy to transport, conceal, its very accurate and the 6 dart capacity gives you enough time to create space and reload.

Q: What is your favorite location that you've hosted a game at?
A: The UCSF campus down in Mission Bay. Both Tactical Ops games I've done there have been a blast and the environment the space creates, especially in the Garage can't be duplicated.

Q: Where would you like to host a game?
A: That question deserves two answers: I would love to do an all day event in a giant park, somewhere like Hyde Park in London or Mount Royal park in Montreal. As far as indoor games, I want to do a either a hostage rescue or HvZ game in a high rise building.

Q: What are your favorite countries you've visited?
A: Israel, Ireland, the UK and Canada are all ranked about even.

Q: Favorite cities then?
A: 1) Montreal
     2) London
     3) Belfast
     4) Jerusalem
     5) New York

Q: Someone is sending a Nerf hit squad after you, with orders for your demise. Who is backing you up and what do they have?
A: Ben as a scout, wielding a Retaliator stripped of the attachments. Eric is waiting in ambush with a Rampage: loaded with a 35 dart drum and a blowgun taped to the top (because, as Eric said himself "I'm a spammy muthaf@cka"). Trevor is on one side of me with a Rayven/Stryfe and Beth is on the other with Retaliator and a Strongarm. Arthur is running all over the place either with his Strongarm or just with a sword.

Q: Do you have a Nerf nemesis?
A: I think I have a couple. Yoshi Murai and Andrew Shenck, who I play with here in the city I definitely have a positive, very healthy nemesis relationship with. These guys always want to take me out when we play against each other, so I oblige in returning the favor. Though I have only played with him a coupe of times, Ryan Ramirez, who I play with down in San Jose and up here at games I host, is definitey becoming one. We're always running into each other and at least as of late, I've been able to pull a couple of kind of cool, sneaky tricks on him during games. He's also been able to come back from these tricks and take me out soon after. In the first game I played with him (an HvZ game), he lead a pack of zombies that chased me all through the upper Castro (and its many giant hills) for about 10-15 minutes straight. When I got to the rendezvous point and took a breather, he snuck up through some bushes and tried to get me. He definitely earned my respect then and his many instances of accurate shooting, successful charges and his endless energy have impressed me.

Q: What is your ultimate goal Nerf wise?
A: I want to travel to places with people are into Nerf (or places where they aren't), but the infrastructure for games isn't really established. I would go there, show them how to organize, ultilize the internet and media, give them rule sets for different games and just get regularly scheduled games going. A Johnny Nerfseed if you will.

If you have any other questions, just send them to questionsforconnor@gmail.com I'll answer em and toss them up on the site. Until next time my nerf kindred.