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Hello, my name is Sean and I am a phoneoholic. I think it is about time, we have been operating here for 2 months (and a wild two months it has been). I will tell you who I am, who are all of you people?
A anti-hobbits tale:
By Sean Murphy
My name is Sean Murphy, I am a 32 year old husband and father of 1 and 7/9 kids. I live in Endicott, NY with my wife Melanie and daughter Emily with a new baby on the way, due in 8 weeks. The reason I say the anti-hobbit is that I am 6'4" 320lb guy, not a hobbit.
I spend my days working at my day job that for job-security reasons has to stay out of this post and work as an Applications Engineer. Basically I work for a company that builds robotic assembly cells. I help customers integrate automation into their factory. My machines build the products you use every day (including the MPx200). It's a guess, but I would have to say that 60% of the the cell phones in the world have been built with my machines.
I don't actually work on the site all day like it may seem, many of the stories you see are scheduled to run when they do and I try very hard to only hit the site during lunch and the occasional break.
After work, I stay very busy with the whole family thing and keeping the little 3 bedroom house in working order. I love my wife and kids. My current daughter Emily who is 2 and 1/2 is the smartest kid you have ever met. I know, all parents say that but she really is. She can spell her own name and mommy, she can recite a dozen books nearly word for word, she knows here alphabet, 15-20 colors, 12 shapes, and she has 5 toy cell phones. Did I mention that she is the cutest kid in the world too?
My wife Melanie is a high school art teacher (how she puts up with high school kids is beyond me) and she is due to have a baby girl on February 27th. The level of excitement is high as you can imagine.
I am an early adopter and I do the best I can to help the economy by buying every toy I can and can not afford. I am a DVD collector and have 4 players around the house. I have a RC-10 truck (remote control), a massive wood shop in what was once a 2 car garage, a mountain of ski gear, and lets not forget phones, PDAs, computers, satellite dish, DVR, surround sound, big screen, on and on and on (and an alarm system, don't start casing the joint) I love gadgets and technology and I take advantage of technology. I can go days without touching a pen, it is a paperless world.
I love music, I played in bands for years in my youth, I was a drummer in a heavy metal band. Right now on my phone I have 14 albums comprised of the bands; Soundgarden, Disturbed, Candlebox, Puddle of Mud, Godsmack, Linkin Park, Dream Theater, Metallica, Steve Vai, Joe Satraini, Eminem, and Creed. It is quite a variety so shuffle mode is a real shock to your system.
I love movies, I have seen the Return of the King 3 times in the theater including once at an IMAX. I own both versions of each of the two LOTR movies so far and have probably spent 90 hours of my life watching them. I subscribe to Netflix and usually see 10-15 movies per month (a usual night at the Murphy house has family time until 8:30 when either the wife or I get the kid to sleep and then it's movies and MPx200.org until 11:00 or midnight. My top to favorite movies are in order:
LOTR: The Return of the King
LOTR: The Two Towers
LOTR: The Fellowship of the ring
Something About Mary
Me, Myself, and Irene
No Escape
Monty Python: The Holy Grail
Pitch Black
Jurassic Park
Austin Powers: Goldmember
I don't have a landline phone in my house. We use RoadRunner for Internet access and only cell phones for communication. It works well for us and after living like this for over a year, I wouldn't want it any other way.
I have been creating web sites since 1997 when I launched PCFuel.com, a dismal attempt at a PC hardware tech site, it got no traffic and now buzz no matter how hard I tried. I sold the domain to a domain name head hunter for $1000 and mover on with my life (he has yet to re-sell it). I moved on to launch an online Kite Store, a website about Web Developers called MasterDevelopers.com, online shops, I even sponsored a Nascar Craftsman Series Supertruck for a race from one of my sites. I freelanced web design for 6-10 months and built a dozen sites for local companies and had fun doing it but when my daughter was born in 2001, I shut everything down to be a dad.
This is my first venture into a web-site since then. I ordered my MPx the first day they were available from AT&T and had it the next day. I fell in love with this phone immediately and searched the internet for a site like this one and couldn't find anything. I registered the domain name on a Friday, put the site on my server over the weekend and on Monday launched the site. It has really taken off thanks to all of you.
Since launching this site I have talked 5 of my friends into buying the MPx200. It's funny at a party with these folks, there have been a few occasions where 4 if use have all been there like a bunch of geeks with our MPxs all in a row. They all come to me and ask me how to do this and how to do that. I keep telling them to hit the site and see, if it is not there one of you will help out. They still call. That is why I don't publish my phone number here.
My interests in life... My family is real important, my phone and this site are big in my life, I love my SCOTTeVEST, I love my surround sound, I love to Ski, I love to work on my Jet lathe. This all keeps me way too busy. I try to do everything I can here but sometimes I don't have time to even cruse the forums for a day.
The future...
I can see convergent technology taking over, the days of the single device are just beginning. Look for phones with more features, more memory, higher resolution, and tons more from the software community.
This site will do well, I can see the potential of this site and this community, you all make it great. I think we will have to probably drop the device specific name at some point and go a little more broad based, I have mpx200.org, mpx220.org, and sph-i600.org but I don't want to have to change every 10 minutes when a new model of phone is released. (Also it won't be long before someone snipes one before I can get it.)
I am talking with a guy who is one of the premier web human-factors/usability guys in the world (not Jakob but in the ballpark). We are talking about bringing him on board and working together to provide human-factors/usability consulting services. This is pretty exciting to me because I would love to help influence the hardware and software being made right now and see if we can't make this stuff really intuitive and easy to use. We also would look for focus groups and testers which may involve some of you.
I have developed a PDA case concept and pitched it to a major case manufacturer. They love it and are in the pre-production phase right now. If this goes well, I will bring more ideas to them. I would love to work myself to a place where I could do telecommunications consulting, web sites, usability work, and invention full time. Probably not in 2004 but who knows, I am working on it.
This has certainly turned into a book, oh well. If you made it this far congratulations.
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