Kirby

kirby at thinkgeek dot com

Sharing the name of a legendary comic book artist and popular video game character, Kirby was perhaps destined for geekness from the beginning, and has done his best to live up to these expectations.

Kirby was drawn to computers since getting a Vic-20 at an early age, and shortly thereafter graduating to the Commodore 64 (with a healthy dose of time spent in front of the Atari 2600 as well). Thanks to the handy (if true) excuse of summer allergies, he spent a good portion of his childhood connecting to the local BBSs around Corvallis, Oregon.

This led to the discovery of the Internet in the early nineties, before they'd let just anyone in.  Kirby became active in Usenet, even running the rec.arts.comics 'Squiddy' awards for several years.  He also started playing online text roleplaying games (of the MUSH variety), which combine the awesomeness of pen-and-paper RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons with the convenience of the Internet, and founded a Werewolf: The Apocalypse MUSH in 1993 that is still running today.

In the spring of 2009, Kirby packed his bags and dice and brought his West Coast Perl skills to the Think Geek monkey cages, after honing his skills at places both geeky (such as IMDb.com) and more mundane (like WhitePages.com).