Geoff Allen

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My Job

Yes, I Have a Life!

My Interests

Interests Galore

I've been known to have one or two interests. Well, one or two per month would be more like it. If you wonder how any sane person could end up so, well, eclectic, check out the description of the ENFP personality type.

How on earth do I find time for them all, you ask? It's easy! I don't!

Roller Coasters

I'm a roller coaster fanatic living in a roller coaster desert. Folks in Ohio or Pennsylvania have a multitude of coasters nearby to ride. Living in the northwest, I have far fewer. When you live in the desert, you like to have an oasis or two nearby. I do:

Timber Terror, Silverwood Theme Park, Athol, ID

A wonderful, airtime-filled coaster designed by CCI and built in 1996. This is one of my two "home" coasters, and a wonderful one it is. A lot of coaster enthusiasts would gladly trade, I'm sure.

Tremors, Silverwood Theme Park, Athol, ID

My other home coaster, an airtime-filled twister, with 4 underground tunnels. Designed by CCI and built in-house by Silverwood in 1999.

Roller Coaster, Western Washington Fair, Puyallup, WA

An ACE Coaster Classic that only operates a few weeks each year, but that has the smoothest ride you'll ever experience on any coaster, wooden or steel. All in all, it's a tame roller coaster, but the ride is extremely enjoyable.

Coaster, Playland Amusement Park, Vancouver, BC

There are roller coasters, and then there are mind-blowing roller coasters. This is one of the latter. Get in line, and then hold on to your hats, the lap bar, and anything else you can find. This is one coaster that lets you know that it is in control, and you are merely at its mercy. This wonderful ACE Classic Coaster is perpetually scheduled to be shut down "in a year or two," so be sure to go to the lovely city of Vancouver and experience this coaster before it's too late. You will not regret a trip to ride this little-known gem of a coaster. (The news has been a bit more positive lately, but nothing's for sure yet.)

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Photography

Photography has been a long-time interest. I have my own darkroom, and teach photography in our local 4-H club. My primary camera is a 4x5 inch view camera that I built myself. It was built from a kit manufactured by Bender Photographic. I'm probably the only guy on my block who built his own camera. Of course, I'm probably also the only guy on my block crazy enough to haul around a view camera. (The camera and its accessories fill an internal frame backpack.)

Why hassle with such a camera? Well, the "4x5" in the description of the type of camera refers to the size of the image on film -- 4x5 inches. When you consider that an image on 35mm film is about 1x1.5 inches, you can see that there is a lot more area for recording the image, which directly means more resolution and a much higher-quality image. This, of course, assumes that the photographer is making a photograph that is worthy of all of that extra technical quality! "There is nothing more disturbing than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept" -- Ansel Adams

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Baseball

Baseball was, is, and always will be to me the best game in the world.
George Herman "Babe" Ruth

Baseball is the best game in the world. Listen to Mr. Ruth. I hear he knew a thing or two about baseball.

Why is baseball great? Because it combines the grace and athleticism of a Jim Edmonds catch or a Barry Bonds blast with the strategy of when to hit and run or when to pitch out. A pitcher can be successfull with the speed and power of a Randy Johnson fastball, the pinpoint accuracy of a Greg Maddux strike on the outside corner, or even the unpredictability of a Tom Candiotti knuckleball. Baseball is the fairest game. Everyone gets an equal chance at winning. Everyone gets 27 outs. Since there's no timer, baseball is the one sport where "it's not over until it's over." In (American) football, if you're down by 14 points at the two minute warning, and the other team has the ball and you have no timeouts left, the game is over, and the two minutes on the clock is just counting down the inevitable. But in baseball, if you're down by 7 runs in the bottom of the 9th inning, and there are two outs, you still have a chance. (A remote chance, but a chance nonetheless.)

I grew up in Southern California, and bled Dodger Blue. I took a little transistor radio with me to school so I could listen to bits of day games between classes. (We called small portable radios "transistor radios" in those days.) Those were the years of Steve Garvey, Dave Lopes, Bill Russell, and Ron Cey in the infield, Steve Yeager behind the plate, and Jerry Reuss and Bert Hooten on the mound. It was a great time to be a Dodger fan, even if Reggie Jackson did spoil the fun in October.

Then I moved to southeast Idaho. The nearest Major League teams were in Oakland, San Francisco, and Seattle, none of which interested me. (Especially San Francisco. It's against the rules for a Dodger fan to care about the Giants.) I kind of lost touch with Major League Baseball. I'd watch a game on TV now and then, but it just wasn't the same. For a couple of years, Pocatello had a rookie-league ball club. They weren't that good, but they were local, and it was fun to go watch them. When the Colorado Rockies came, they became my closest team. I started to get interested again. But soon thereafter, I moved to north Idaho. I paid a little bit of attention to the Mariners, but they were American League. Designated Hitter. Longball baseball. Blech. But Ken Griffey, Jr. was making a bid for Roger Maris' home run record in 1994. This was getting interesting.

Then came the strike. I, along with a lot of others, gave up on Major League Baseball.

But in 1995, they settled the strike, and two things happened to get me hooked on baseball again. First was Cal Ripken, Jr.'s 2131st consecutive game. That was magical. I had grown up knowing that the one record that would never be broken was Lou Gehrig's consecutive game streak, yet, here I was watching it be broken. Then the Mariners started making a run on the faltering Angels. "Refuse to Lose" was the slogan heard all over the northwest. I became a die-hard Mariners fan that year, and have been following their daily fortunes ever since.

As for unbreakable records, there's always Joe Dimaggio's hitting streak....

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Computers

I consider myself a "Macintosh Old-Fart", since I was one of those lucky enough to have experienced the magic of the original Macintosh. I've written down some of my recollections of those pioneering days as "Macintosh Old-Fart Memories" that may interest fellow Macintosh Old-Farts.

I'm also a Unix weenie. I have taught classes in Unix System Administration and Unix Programming Tools. Historically, some people might have considered "Unix weenie" and "Macintosh Old Fart" to be incompatible, but I have always found both OSes to be elegant and pleasurable to use. Windows has made a lot of advancements, but it's still not in the same league as Unix and Mac.

And now, with Mac OS X, I get to be a Macintosh Old-Fart Unix Weenie. I love it.

Being a fan of Apple makes me able to empathize with what it must feel like to be a Chicago Cubs fan (though I think Apple is weirder than the Cubbies could ever hope to be). Lately, Apple's fortunes have been riding high, but I'm sure that'll change, and soon we'll see pundits declaring that Apple is history and won't survive.

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Music

I love music. I love to listen to music, and I love to play music.

When it comes to playing, I play or have played, with varying degrees of musicality, saxophone, flute, clarinet, bassoon, recorder, jew's harp, harmonica, ocarina, fiddle, mandolin, guitar, and bass. When people ask me how many instruments I play, I say, "Only one at a time." When people aske me if there's anything I don't play, I say, "Brass."

In high school, I was a run-of-the-mill saxophonist, but once I switched to bassoon, I became a hero. I even got offered a full-ride music scholarship, with no audition required. The world is hurtin' for bassoonists. But I decided that I kind of liked eating, so being a professional bassonist wasn't the career choice for me.

I have rather eclectic musical tastes. I believe there are two kinds of music -- good music and bad music. There are examples of both kinds in every musical style. Among my favorite musicians are Brad Paisley, Junior Brown, Wylie and the Wild West, Riders in the Sky, Clifford Brown, John Coltrane, Count Basie, and, shucks, just about anybody who's ever played jazz (though Sun Ra can be a bit hard to take).

I play regularly at church. The current schedule is two weeks on, two weeks off. I play saxophone, flute, clarinet, and mandolin, depending on what the song at hand most needs. My oldest son plays drums on our worship team, so we're keeping it in the family. I'm also part of a lunchtime musical group at work that plays jazz, rock, and blues music. We're all employees in the Information Technology Services department, and we call ourselves "/dev/null" (if you're not a Unix geek, you might want to read a definition of /dev/null). If you come by the Information Technology Building at Washington State University during lunch, you might hear us playing a jazz tune like "Sugar," or "Mr. P.C." or "Lady Bird," or might hear us doing "House of the Rising Sun," or even "Jailhouse Rock." If it's a good song and we like it, we'll play it.

By the way, I should not be confused with the other musical Geoff Allen, also known as the "Dorsey Gang Troubadour." That Geoff lives in Texas and is a radio DJ. Geoff's page is kind of surreal -- I read my name all over the page but none of it is about me. We're easy to tell apart, though. He has pictures of himself with a bunch of famous musicians. I don't.

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Videography

Aside from music, my primary preoccupation these days is videography. Not content to merely record events as they happen, I strive to be a full-blown family documentarian. I've also done a couple of weddings. Currently, I'm using Apple's Final Cut Express to do my editing and iDVD to create the final product. My definition of a good video is one that tells the story and conveys the emotions of a trip, event, or time of life. It's a lot of fun to make the videos, and fun to watch people re-live (or vicariously live for the first time) the feelings of an event.

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Magic

I've been interested in magic (prestidigitation, not occultism) since elementary school. My principal was a magician and got me started. I enjoy the psychology behind why magic works, the performing aspects of it, and the outright wonder of doing the "impossible." One student here at WSU has suggested that magic and system administration are actually quite similar, because they both involve "doing the impossible using arcane incantations." Hmm.... Maybe....

In 2005 a magic club started up at WSU. I'm currently the advisor for the club, and we're having a lot of fun working on our effects and, most importantly, performing for people. Seeing David Blaine on TV is one thing, but when the magic happens right in front of you, with your card, or your coin, or in your hand, it can be even more impressive.

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Trains

Johnny Cash sang, "I've got a thing about trains," and that's true of me, as well. This area is rich in railroad history, with logging and mining roads probing the mountains around here. In addition, the Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific Railroad crossed the mountains just north of where I live, and the Burlington Northern/Santa Fe still does. My house is right next to an abandoned Northern Pacific branch line (that ran from Moscow, ID to Lewiston, ID, via Julietta, ID).

In addition to real trains are model trains. I'm what's called in the business an "armchair modeler". That means I've yet to actually build a layout, but I've sure dreamt about it a lot. One of these days, the kids and I are going to set up shop in some corner of the house where we don't have the room for it and build that N-scale layout we have everything for but the time and the space.

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Sourdough

I enjoy making sourdough bread. You know, with a smelly, fermenting starter and all. If I do say so myself, my bread is amazingly good. Atkins-Schmatkins.

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