About Me

Hello, there! My name is Adrian Austin. I was born and raised in North Dakota. I've lived in Mandan my whole life...except for those two years I stayed at the University of Mary dorms, but that was just across the river. I don't count that. Anyway, never mind that. Where was I? Ah, yes. I was born on January 16, 1986, which I understand makes me a Capricorn, the goat. I guess I don't follow the significance of that. That must just mean I'm a baaaaad boy that likes to butt heads. Oof! That was terrible, wasn't it? Just forget you read that one. So, that's what I amount to: a goat. I could have been a lion, but I guess all I know how to be is a goat.

Moving on. To my left, which coincidentally is your left as well, you can see my house. That's right: MY HOUSE. I'm just letting my parents live with me. Okay, my father is giving me the "evil eyes" here, so allow me to reverse that.

Like I said, I have two older brothers. Scotty works in law enforcement, and Steve works for the plumber's union. So, Steve is the only guy I know who says that his job stinks, but he loves it. Both are also married with children. Scotty and his wife Amy have Dylan and Hailey. Steve and his wife Katherine have Victoria and Brenna. Brenna is my Goddaughter. So I am what the Italians would call "The Godfather." So, there shall be no disrespect to my family, capisce?

My Brother Steve and His Wife Katherine	My Parents Scott and Ginger	My Brother Scotty and His Wife Amy
Steve and Katherine's Children Brenna (My Goddaughter, Left) and Victoria (Right)		Scotty and Amy's Children Hailey (Left) and Dylan (Right)

Friends

Family's good. They're people you can live with 365 days out of the year, but when you're in a leap year that's just too much family. That's why God invented friends. You need someone to "hang out" with to "chill out" and take a vacation from that "polite frame of mind that our parents require" as my friends would say. Yes, my friends do have that extensive of a vocabulary. We'll just say that I taught them the big words. Now, allow me to introduce you to my group of friends. If you happen to be one of my friends reading this page, then just enjoy the pretty pictures.

	This dude right here is Jason Lantz. That cool, quiet guy I've known since 1st Grade, and he's been like a brother ever since. We go to the University of Mary together and roomed together here for a couple years. We've had good times with videogames, paintballing, or just hanging out. We've made friends with some interesting characters. He has a cool sense of humor. Just look at his shirts.
	That's Brian Helmenstein. Jason and I met this cocky, funny guy during our "occupational adventures" at Wal-Mart. We started off with videogames (mostly Halo), but Brian introduced us to different hobbies, too. I had never paintballed or played Dungeons & Dragons until I met him. We both work at Sykes in Bismarck currently. Tomorrow, who knows where we'll be. Morgan is Brian's girlfriend. Who do you think gave me all these pictures?
	Here is Ty Tipton. Brian met him at Sykes and introduced this sharp, crafty man at a Dungeons & Dragons session. Ever since, we've introduced him to paintballing and Halo. We've had a blast with our games. Originally Texan, he's the only one of us not born in North Dakota. The man has got a handful of very interesting stories, including how he crafted armor and sword fought in Renaissance Festivals.

Those are just a few of the people I hang out with. Sometimes the group gets pretty big. For instance, I recall one night we had 11 people in a 2-bedroom apartment all playing Halo on 3 different X-Boxes and 3 different monitors. There was a lot of hollering and cursing from midnight until dawn that night. When we get tired of shouting obscenities at the person in the other room, because they always get to the rocket launcher first, we change things up a bit. We go from shooting at each other in a videogame to ... really shooting at each other with paint. Once we begin to feel any excess of pain, we take it easy. We play "pretend," I mean ... Dungeons & Dragons. It's all been good fun, cool experiences.

School

When all the fun is said and done, it's time for school again. I've been going to school since my younger years, i.e. kindergarten. I spent my younger years at St. Joseph's Elementary School in Mandan, ND. It's also the church my family and I belong to to which my family and I belong. It's a beautiful church. So much so, that an artist by the name of Gary Miller painted a winter scene of the church (to your left). I'm told if you keep staring at the bell tower you can hear it chime Joy to the World. The painting is just that good.

After elementary school came more-than-elementary school: junior high school. Mandan Junior High School was a two-year adventure for me. I think I learned something from junior high. I took a Home Economics class. Now, I can cook a spicy meal or two. Ramen Noodles is one of my famous dishes. I can cook Ramen like nobody's business. The other dish is Chicken Alfredo. So what if it's the Easy-Mac version? It's still Chicken Alfredo and it requires a skillet and boiling water. To me, that constitutes cooking.

Next came high school. I went to (You probably guessed it.) Mandan High School. I can say I had a good old time there. Made some good friends and had some cool classes. Yes, high school classes can be cool. I thought Chemistry was by far the most fun. When your teacher throws a ball of crystallized magnesium into a water-filled sink and it explodes, you say to yourself, "My ears are ringing. That's sweet!" Of course, there were plenty of other classes: Calculus, Physics, Web Design, etc. As you can probably tell, I enjoy the science, math, and computer classes much more than the English classes.

After high school was college. I am currently going to the University of Mary in Bismarck. My major is in Computer Information Systems, and my minor is Math. I'll tell you, I don't think many people go that exact route. Most of the times, when the faculty hear my major is CIS, they assume my minor would be Accounting or Business Administration. See, I'm a Kuniva like that. I keep them guessing. I suppose they didn't expect me to jump divisions like that from the Business Division to the Mathematics & Natural Sciences Department. I also do work-study here in the Computer Services department. The past few semesters I worked with Chris Remme in hardware. So, if you've seen me in the girl's dorms with a cart loaded with monitors or printer parts ... that's why.

So far, I really like what I've experienced so far at UMary. The top reasons for that are that the people are very friendly here and I think the campus is really beautiful ... in the spring and summer. The winters can be almost Arctic, because the UMary hill is like a wind magnet. Still, the campus is beautiful when it's above 0°F. In the spring, off to the west of the campus hill, the Missouri River cuts through the woods flourishing with all shades of green. It would strike a poem, but I'm just not that creative.

Work

I got my first job at Wal-Mart in the summer after I graduated from high school. At Wal-Mart I worked as a "Receiving Associate," which is a nice way of saying "truck unloader." See, the Wal-Mart trucks are packed with loose freight, meaning it was feasibly possible to open the truck door and get an Acme Anvil to land on your head. Our job was to throw the loose freight on a roller, push it down the line, pick the freight up off the roller, and stack it on the proper pallet (sorted by department) ... really a no-brainer. Sometimes the job would tire me out, but it wasn't all that bad. Jason and I met some cool people there, including Brian.

In the summer of '05 I quit Wal-Mart to work fulltime work-study at UMary in the Computer Services Department with Chris Remme. It was a fun summer, a much less strenuous job than unloading truck. Chris had me troubleshoot hardware problems on faculty and lab computers, do maintenance of computers (including replacing hard drives, upgrading RAM, or completely replacing the computers), and many other interesting random tasks. I had some good times with that summer job. After the summer work-study session ended, it was supposed to be back to school AND back to work. However, the latter didn't happen right away. For some odd reason, Wal-Mart thought it wouldn't be "cost effective," or whatever they called it, to hire me back as a part-timer. Thanks a million, Wal-Mart. You've given me a gift no job I've yet had has given me: a one-month vacation. So, the first month of school sophomore year was quite ... relaxing.

Eventually, I grew impatient waiting for Wal-Mart and got a job at Dan's Supermarket. Dan's "Stupermarket" is the only place I've worked that requires to be clean shaven of facial hair and to keep head hair above the ears ... above the ears. Another thing was we had to wear black jeans or dress pants and a white polo shirt featuring the Dan's logo. By the way, I worked in the bakery as a panner. I guess they wanted me to dress nice to look good for the dough ... or something. My job as a panner involved collecting the required bread dough (stored in boxes in a garage-sized freezer), placing the dough in the right amounts on pans, placing the pans on roll-around racks, and storing the racks in coolers. Then I guess the morning crew comes in and rolls the racks into a machine called the proof box which I'm told uses a good deal of heat and moisture to prepare the dough for the ovens. After panning, I clean my work area. It was a simple job. I did like it, but a better opportunity opened up for me.