So I finally got around to updating my picture (2019-04-20), and here's what I look like in all my soccer refereeing glory.

Hello, my first name is Josh and my last name is NOT Adarajin or whatever screen name you happened to have encountered me under. Internet privacy and personal information security on the internet are some of my biggest pet peeves, so you'll have to be understanding when I'm a bit vague on some of the information about me. This is a fairly public page for who is able to browse it, and if you want more complete information you are welcome to ask me directly.

I was born in the middle of 1988 (you can calculate my age yourself so I don't have to keep updating) and first started to be active online in the game of Neopets in January of 2004.

After neopets, I then moved on to play the MMORPG (massive multi-player online roll-playing game) of RuneScape starting sometime in 2005 I believe, shortly afterwards starting a membership subscription which I have never allowed to lapse since. It was a highly enjoyable game and I was active on the forums to the point where I was invited to become a Forum Moderator in November of 2007. I continued to play for approximately 4 years quite solidly before eventually getting bored of the game and moving on to World of Warcraft (WoW). I did come back actively for a month or so when I was granted the additional status of player moderator, but WoW held most of my attention for the most part for that time period, leading to my eventually losing Forum Moderator status due to inactivity on the forums, but keeping my new Player Moderator status because I was logging in periodically to the RuneScape game.

It is in World of Warcraft, which I joined sometime in 2009 I believe, that I changed my primary online identity to be Adarajin (the old identity wasn't exactly the most appropriate anymore), the name of my preferred character, a worgen (Alliance) warrior. Once the option to change display names came out on RuneScape, I also changed my name there. On WoW, Adarajin is either a melee damage dealer, or a tank depending on my mood. because I am a skilled player at whatever position that I choose to be, and while I sometimes find being a damage dealer to be more relaxing, I get tired of encountering lousy tanks. My alts are usually classes that can heal as well as dps. Things changed for me with Blizzard, the makers of World of Warcraft when there was the big "Free Hong Kong" controversy near the end of 2019, when the US company of Blizzard caved in to their Chinese investors, and cracked down on some of their gaming competitors for activist statements made. After that, I refuse to give Blizzard any more of my money, so no more World of Warcraft for me.

I am a highly social player online and had been a part of a couple of social guilds on WoW for the past several expansions, and while I have gone through a few different guilds, it generally takes a lot to make me move from one guild to the next - usually it is the guild falling apart rather than my leaving while things are going well. Outside of the MMORPG's, but still on the computer, I am decent at the FPS (first-person shooter) games and used to excel at Battlefront (a star-wars based game) and Battlefront II to the point that when myself and Lavarider, a good friend of mine, would come on, other players would recognize us and groan knowing that with us teamed together, they were in for a tough fight. But I much prefer playing RTS (real-time strategy) games such as Age of Empires II, Starcraft, Earth 2160, Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, and Stellaris. These games I like to play with others in private LAN parties offline, consisting usually of 4-8 players.

Speaking of being social online, I have made a habit of occasionally going to visit people in person who I have first met online and have known for a while. To date, I have visited at least 5-10 different groups of people, totaling 15-20+ people that I first met online.

Outside of the computer games, I do have a life despite what people might think from having read the previous several paragraphs. My original focus of study was to be a Game Design Programmer, or at least work in customer service in the games industry (ok, that's not really outside of gaming) for a career, but I discovered that I enjoy writing about code much more than I enjoy writing the code itself...so now I want to be a Technical Writer. My dream job would be to be the interpreter between the technical programmers and the non-technical end-users. Sounds like a fancy job, but realistically I'll probably end up writing user manuals - oh well... As far as my current job goes though, I am in a position that covers a mixture of duties working with a small business company. I am level 2 tech support for one of our company clients, taking the issues that the level 1 person cannot resolve and either handling it myself if it can be fixed with a database change or forwarding it on with the appropriate priority level to one of the programmers if it requires code changes. Additionally, when new content is released, I am the one to pull out my sledgehammer as I like to say and see what bugs I can find or if I can break the logic working on it as if I were a regular user. Sometimes we joke this makes me the least popular person in the company, because I keep finding work for others to do. This quality assurance task is more commonly what I do, hence my current job title being "QA Lead."

Outside of the computer world, I also enjoy a variety of sports. I live in California, USA, and have been an active soccer referee since 2002 (see my latest picture at the top of this page). My joke about refereeing being better than playing is that you don't have to go to practice and you get paid to come to the games - something that wasn't true when I was a player myself. I referee just about year-round, having averaged 150 games the past several years post-COVID time period. The pay is pretty good, averaging out to be about $30/hr, which means I can pull in as much as $300 a weekend on busy or tournament weekends. For other excercise, there is a really nice bike trail nearby, and I consider a short ride to be 10 miles round trip - a good exercise extended ride is 20-30+ miles sometimes. I also like to go bowling a bunch, and my boss has been trying to get us to be more active by taking us to the tennis courts after work some days, or occassionally the attached basketball court.

When the weather is more inclement, I often spend my time reading when not gaming, primarily of the sci-fi or fantasy adventure genre's. My favorite authors include Mercedes Lackey, C.J. Cherryh, S.L. Viehl, Carrie Vaughn, Lindsay Buroker, Meghan Ciana Doidge, and many others. I am also somewhat of a writer myself, and will be publishing my first story, a full-length fantasy/adventure novel of approximately 88,000 wordcount in early 2025. If you are interested in more information about it, please feel free to contact me and I will link you to my author website.

Well, I think that's enough about me, I look forward to talking to you wherever you happened to meet me.
~Josh