What's your real first name?
Michael.

Is there any special reason why you chose the name BIGBADWOLF?
I choose that name about a month after I started playing on-line games on IYT. On IYT, you could still have your normal login name (macoan), but it also lets you choose a special Name & City that will display on the games. So I seen a lot of other players with cool names, and "macoan" was kind of plain - I picked "BIG BAD WOLF" from "Boogy Woogy Land" or something silly like that. When I first picked that name, my plan was to keep changing it to different silly names, but ended up just keeping BBW, and since a lot of people knew me as BBW – I started trying to use it on all the game sites. NOTE: The BIG BAD WOLF is always in all caps, so if you see a Big Bad Wolf not in all caps, then it probable is not me.

How old are you? ... and how much is that in human years?
Well here is my aprox age as of Oct 9, 2004 (Earth age will change on Oct 19, 2004!)

Mercury - 186 days / 124 years
Venus - 44 days / 48 years
Earth - 10,944 days / 29 years
Mars - 10,639 days / 15 years
Jupiter - 26,406 days / 2 years old
Saturn - 24,947 days / 1 year old
Uranus - 15,194 days / under 1 year old
Neptune - 16,259 days / under 1 year old
Pluto - 1,708 days / under 1 year old
(Fun calculator found at: http://www.solarviews.com/eng/edu/age.htm - good thing no one asked me about my weight!)

What do you want for your upcoming birthday? Or do you want to leave this decision in my capable hands?
New house, new car, new TV, new wife... Opps sorry, wife is fine - I'll keep that. Let see, what else: Portable DVD player, new computer, cash, low home mortgage rate, bedroom enhancing tools, ... UGH, sorry again - I'm going through my junk e-mail while I'm writing this. Ok, what was the question again? You see, in my old age I forget easily. Never mind, on to the next question. (As I write this, my birthday is in a few days - Oct 19, 2004 - which I'll be a little older then 29 years old. Gifts are always accepted from anyone - Cards, CASH, music cd's, CASH, something else, CASH)

Are you married? If so, is her nic Little Red Riding Hood?
Yes, married for four years now. She does not play many games now, but her nic is ScuttleBug - which if you look it up you will see she does not get on here very much - ScrabbleBug is about the only place she plays - and that is very little. (When she plays games, it is usually off line games like Tiger Woods Golf.)

Tell us about your family. Do you have any kids?
I have a wife (mentioned above), and a great 3 year old son. ( http://nathan.coan.net ) Nathan (my son) has had his own website from even before he was born with tons of pictures! It is currently a little outdated, but we should have it updated soon. But if anyone really wants to know what I look like, there are a few pictures of myself mixed in with his pictures - so you will have to dig! :-)

Do you have any siblings? Brothers or Sisters, and Older or Younger?
I have 2 older sisters. My favorite sister does not play on BrainKing, and the other does play on BrainKing as SueQ - which is why she asked the question about what I wanted for my birthday there above.

Who is your favorite sister?
Well if you do not read what I wrote in the question above this, Then I will say SueQ is my favorite sister!

Where do you live?
Central Illinois, near Indiana border - in middle of tons of corn/bean fields - about 1/2 way between Springfield, IL and Indianapolis, IN. (Not too close to Chicago).

What are your weekday and weekends like - what you would like to change?
Weekdays are hectic right now - my son started going to school 1/2 days - and then back in childcare for the second half of the day. BUT because of school districts, etc... they can not bus him that far - so I'm leaving work each day to pick him up from school to take him to childcare - which is in the same place I work which is really cool ( http://www.tcfcs.org - The Center for Children's Services). If I could change it, I would change it to how it was a little more then a year ago - me a stay at home dad! But we need money, so back to work I went. :-(

It is obvious you are very in tuned to a computer.. At what age did you first really start using a computer.. and how long after that did you realize that you had special talents and skills with them?
I graduated from high school in 1992, went to collage for engineering, then switched to elementary education, then switched to general, then left school. Did odd stuff for a could years, and then decided to go back to college in 1995. At that point I did not know much of anything about computer, but at that time - computer jobs were "hot" - so I went for small computer programming and excelled - about any computer language I tried I could learn. (Plus it did not hurt that I had a third shift job at a gas station which normally had about 10 customers all night - so I was able to read, study, etc...) I then started working as an intern / part time / full time at a manufacturing plant working with their computer network & users. I only did a little RPG programming for the Y2K conversion, but other then that - I learned a lot of my networking & PC skills there. Plant closed in Sept 2001, and at that time I went back to school for computer networking - which is basically what I was doing, but I was mostly interested in the CISCO courses they had - which was included in the computer networking degree.

where did you go to college and what was your major?
Community collage - ( http://www.dacc.edu ) - DACC - Majored in a few things (listed above), but have 2 associates degrees (Computer Programming & Computer networking)

At college, were you known as 'Big Wolf on Campus'
As posted in a previous question, I did not give myself the name "BIG BAD WOLF" until about April/May 2001 on IYT game site. I was mostly known in college as the BBS guy - that is I maintained a list of free chat BBSes (old days, text only) where you could telnet to and talk (List still maintained at: http://www.coan.net/bbslist ). Back then everyone had a unix account, and typing "PINE" would bring up their PINE mailbox. Well with some creative scripting and such, I had about 40+ users who when they typed "michael", it would bring up my own BBSList program which was very cool. I was also a lab aide & tutor, which most everyone liked me because I could help them a lot with their computer programs - even classes & languages that I did not take, I could take a look at and find mistakes and such. Also meet my wife there, one of the users of my "michael script" program.

How long does it take you each day to brush your coat?
What is cool is I don't even use a brush anymore. I got this industrial strength ceiling fan installed in my house, and after my showers, I grab a blade, turn it on and swing around and around and around and around and around until I'm dry! (Plus I try to keep it trimmed down so I do not get many tangles - but it's all about the right hair conditioner. After applying the conditioner, you let it stand for 4-5 minutes before washing it off - it does wonders!

How long is your tail?
Well this is a sad story, but I will share it because I feel you are all my friends. Back in my high school days, me and a friend found a key to our high school’s principals office, but what was so special about this key was it was to a side door which is never used anymore, plus no one in the office even had a key for. Well we were a small high school – 200 students most, so we had our school dances in the cafeteria. A teacher would stand guard by the door going to the rest of the school so no students will get up there during the dance. Well after explaining to the teacher that there was an important book left in the locker, he let me go up and get it to come right back down. Well up 2 flights of stairs, to the study room, a quick prop open of an emergency exit was done, quickly grab the book, and back to the dance. About 3 hours after the dance, 1-2am every early Sunday morning, a trip to the school and into the open fire exit we went. Next stop, the Principals office – through the door which we are the only ones with a key too – yea! Well in the Principals office is the master key ring with almost every key to every door in the school, so we took them all. Next afternoon, we went through the keys, found about 10 or so that we could really use – that is open key outside door, etc. We took those 10 keys and made copies of them so we could have our own keys to the school. Then that night, 11pm Sunday night, the only local police man does the same thing, drive to the next town and spends time with that local cop. We make our way back into the school, back into the principals office, and put back ALL the keys we took. So now once Monday morning comes around, nothing is missing.

So a couple of weeks go by, and it's time for us to pull a school prank – the "First annual Easter Lock Hunt" was what we called it. Three of us entered the school, removed all the locks from all the lockers of all the underclass mates. (Our lockers had removable combination locks on all the lockers, but they also had a key in the back which the school administration could get into any time – and of course, we had a copy of that key now). So we took all those locks, and hid them throughout the school – in teachers desk, in empty lockers, etc… EVERYWHERE. We even left the note "First Annual Easter Lock Hunt sponsored by the Class of 1992" on the principals desk with a lock right on top of it. We also left notes in many teachers room, plus many students lockers so everything knew what this prank was. NOTE: Our goal in the prank was to not cause any actual damage – just time wasted with them finding locks, and matching which locks go back to which students. So while hiding the locks, one of us had the bright idea to hide some up on the roof. Well to get to the roof was not easy. (plus it's about 4 stories up). We had to get into a teachers closet, go up a crawlspace to a storage area, where there is a door to get to the roof. It is not used very much, I think mostly just to put up some Christmas decorations around Christmas time. So we are going through the door, which is self locking – so as the other 2 people were already on the roof heading around the corner, I grab the door knob to slowly close the door so that it does not latch – just close lightly. At that time, the door handle actually FALLS OFF with the door heading to be closed. It took some quick thinking and a fast "tail" to put it into the door as it slammed on the tail. But the good news is that I saved the door from shutting. Looking back, if that door did shut and lock, there was a very good chance we would have had to stay there until someone came and got us – there was no other (safe) way down. Also the school changed the main outside door locks, plus the main principles office locks – which we had keys to less used doors so it did not hurt us much at all.

So you ask about the tail – well it was removed shortly after the above adventure. Doctors said they could do some plastic surgery and re-attach a tail, but I believe the no tail look is good for me.

Did you really huff and puff and blow the house down?
Well there is some truth to that story, which basically was after the annual chili cook off – where many different cooks had tons and tons of chili to eat. Yum Yum Yum. I don’t want to go into the details of the story, but later that evening there was an incident, which did not actually blow the house down, but did make it structurally unstable and had to be demolished shortly after. But it was a day that I try not to think about too much so I hope you understand why I’m not going to give much details about it.

What do you know about the disappearance of Little Red Riding Hood and her Granny?
I know nothing! It's the same thing I told the police, the neighbors, unsolved mysteries, and the fairy tale gazette – I know nothing. I was alone at home that day watching the Brady Bunch marathon on TV. That Alice cracks me up!

Have you ever played against one of the three little pigs, or little red riding hood, or even one of the seven little lambs? If so, who won?
Well I can report I only lost one of those games against little red riding hood, and you see what happen to her! Muhahahahahaha! Of course, I had nothing to do with that.

What game got you to BrainKing? And what is your favourite game around here now?
I like to play a variety of games, but my favorites would be the gammon games (not anti), and the boat games. I not very good at Chess, which is why I like Dark Chess & Crazy Screen Chess – since I feel I have more of a chance to win in those games. I also like some of the new games like Amazons, Froglet, Jarmo, cylinder chess, and Espionage – but will take some more time to see if I will keep on liking those games.

What brought you to Brainking and what do you like most about it?
What brought me to BrainKing was just fact that I wanted to play more games. I loved trying different games, and playing different people. Being able to create our own tournaments is one of the reasons I originally paid for a membership, and I'm up to almost 1,600 tournament created on BrainKing (It would be interesting if Fencer could find out who created the 2nd most tournament to see how obsessed with this site I am.) But no one game actually brought me to BrainKing – I think a lot of it also was seeing an owner that I could actually talk to and get an answer, and see active changed being made in the site. I knew this site was growing for the better and I was glad I was able to jump aboard as it grew.

How did you find BK?
While on IYT, BrainKing was a site mentioned in one of the message boards. Fed up with seeing nothing new on IYT, finding a new site that was always making itself better was an easy choice. Even though I still play on IYT, I no longer have a paid account there.

If you're the Big Bad Wolf then how come your current profile picture is one of a Nice Little Doggy
And now it's a pumpkin! Well I started with a picture of a wolf, but I decided I would try to start putting up a different picture about once a month. I had a pumpkin ready for October, and I have November's picture ready also. Decembers will be something to do with Christmas, but have not made that one yet. So I used the picture of the nice little doggy as just as something cute until October came around. A game site is here to have fun, so hopefully I can spread some joy with some silly pictures.

What is your favorite game on here?
I love watching all the soap opera that happen on the message boards. The third grade "Hey, that person said this to me… and instead of ignoring it I made it worse… feel pity for me please…" Oh favorite game, see the answer about 3 before this one! :-)

Do you want to give us any advice on how you keep up with so many games and tournaments at the same time and still manage to win most of your games?
Try not to get too many games or games with too short of a time limit. Of course that is easy to say, but can be hard to do. I once again have WAY too many games to play, but I blame Fencer this time. He recently introduced 9 new games, so of course I had to try them all. I also try not to rush through any games. Luckily for me most of my games are gammon or boat games, which only take 2-3 seconds to scan the board to see what the next move will be. Most of the other games take a little more time 5-10 seconds, and if the game is important or against a person with a slightly higher rank - I will try to examine the board a little more closely. For example, in any line game - before you even decide where to go, ask yourself "Why did my opponent place his piece there - what good will it do him" - which will hopefully give you a chance to block if needed. And of course I not only have way too many games on here, I have way too many on GT also - even though I've done good at limiting myself on Dailygammon. And IYT I'm still playing off games (Pro Gammon) that I started when I did have a higher game limit - which I think I might actually be under 20 now! I have stopped playing games on LittleGolem.net, plus I had major issues with Pocket-Monkey.com when it first started so I only have a couple games left on that site.

Why did you decide to be a member of Customer Service? What would you like to change in how Customer Service operates?
It seemed like I was always helping people anyway, I requested to be part of the customer service team. I think I have so many tournaments, and post so much - usually trying to help people, I would still get 1 or 2 messages a month asking for help - which I would try to help, or forward the message on to fencer if it was above me - since I am just a normal user that just knows a lot about BK. What would I change about it? Not sure, will have to think about that more.

I see most of your postings are at day time. Question: what percentage of your time at work you spent on BK?
When I first get to work, I usually eat my breakfast, check my webmails, and usually bring up BK to read the discussion boards while I eat. Occasionally I'll post, but usually I'm on very sporadic during the morning hours – maybe taking a look while talking on the phone, or if I'm waiting for a system to reboot, lunch, etc. I will also sometimes play a few games, but I mostly wait until I’m home to play the majority of the games.

Who do you have on your friends and enemies lists? And who have you put on the new hide feature?
I have about 20 people on my friends list - mostly just to know when they are on-line. I only have 1 person currently on my enemies list - which this person disagreed with something I wrote on the message board (not even directed towards this person), and this person took the time to send me a nasty message and also immediately put me on their enemies list so I could not respond. I'm fine with being on other peoples enemies list and with someone disagreeing with me, but if you are going to start a conversation with me, you should at least let me respond. Anyway, I put this idiot on my enemies list so they could not do that no more. Hide feature - No one yet. I'm pretty good at just ignoring the post which make no sense to me, so I figure it would just be more confusing to me to have those post hidden and people responding to "nothing"

what is your fascination with BrainKing, and what would you do different?
I love playing games. I first had a paid account on itsyourturn.com, and did not like GoldToken.com very much. I then also started to play a lot on DailyGammon.com, and still do play there a lot. LittleGolem.net came along which has some cool and different games, but I don't see much new there. BrainKing.com came along and it was a site I just liked from the start.... and the timing was good. At the time I was unemployed (Stay at home dad), my membership at IYT was running out and decided to pay at BrainKing.com instead of IYT (mostly because you had a limit of only 100 tournament games at IYT - I needed more games!) I have since added a membership at GoldToken.com because they have increased they ladder games & tournament games, but I feel at home at BK so I don't think I will leave any time soon. What would I do different? Well there would be many things I would like to see changed or added at BrainKing, which I try to post on the discussion boards. Sometimes Fencer agrees and changes happen, sometimes it is on the bottom of Fencer's list, and sometimes Fencer does not like the idea so it won't happen. Overall, Fencer does the best of all the turn based games site owners - and that is listen to what others think and want..... not always agreeing with them, but he does listen.

What do you do when you're not haunting BK?
Work, play with my son, and Hot Air Ballooning. I was a student pilot for awhile, but I'm not really interested in being a pilot anymore, mostly now I take picture of the balloons, plus I created and maintain our central Illinois balloon groups website ( http://www.bagiballoon.org )

If you been given a $1,000,000 what will be the first 3 things you do?
(1) Thank the person who gave me the $1,000,000. (2) Invest/bank at least 1/2 of the money - hopefully to get returns/interest that will be enough to live on once I got past the rest of my spending spree. (3) Upgrade to a better house & car. Nothing too over the top or too expensive. (4) Try to make some movies - I have a few movie ideas / scripts that I've been working on which I would love to make into movies - a couple of them I wrote in the mindset that they could be made pretty cheaply (around/under $15,000). (5) My wife would still like to get a hot air balloon, so maybe go and take some "crash" Pilot training classes and get a hot air balloon. (6) Make a deal with Fencer - I would love to get my hands on the code of a game site like this so I can play / test / write my own game code [which is easier to work with existing code and play with that rather then write it from scratch], and also host that "play" code on my own server which can be used to test new games & features on it's own server - and in return would be the agreement that I would never run my own competing game site with that code, along with $$ to be spent on new servers for the current game site. (7) I would get my own mini-datacenter that will host my own servers and such. (8) And the 8th thing I would do is invest in a time machine, go back in time, bribe eagle eye to ask what would be the first 8 things you would do so my 8 answers does not look like an overkill. :-)

ever been to Big Al's?
nope (yea, a short answer!)

What's you favourite movie of all times? Ok, besides "Dances With Wolves"
That is a hard question since I love movies. I have over 1,000 VHS movies and around 300 DVD movies. I'm not sure what my favourite of all time would be, but here is a short list of movies which I always love to watch: Groundhog Day (Watch this at least every Febuary 2nd), Shawshank Redemption, The Matrix, The Green Mile, Back to the Future (all 3), Love Stinks (with French Stewart), Disorganized Crime ... and as I type this, I can think of many many more to put here, but I can't really think of 1 that is my overall favorite. Plus with a 3 year old son, I love watching Shrek, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., and Toy Story. (even though I would love watching them without my son also!)

Do you own any pets? Can you tell us what they are and their names?
I have one, and his name is Nathan. They say he is human, but likes to climb like a monkey. He is three. Other then that, no others yet.

Do you like to read? If so, who are your favourite authors?
nope, do not like to read. Only thing I really read are some computer/networking magazines.

What kind of music do you like?
And now back to the long answers. I think the easier question would be what type of music I don't like, and what I REALLY don't like is Polka.... that just annoys me. I have 8 pre set button on my car radio, 3 are to country stations, 1 to classic rock, 2 to "todays" music - more hip hop/MTV type music, 1 to light rock, and 1 to Christian music station. I basically listen to all types of music. I also worked for about a year at my friends teen club as the DJ. My favorite singers/groups are: Yes, Kings X, Chris Rice, Jars of Clay, DC Talk, Uncle Kracker, Rascal Flatts, Diamond Rio, Kid Rock. GnR, Poison, etc… etc… etc… (But Yes, Kings X, Chris Rice, and Jars of Clay are my 4 favourite)

What was your most embarrassing moment?
I went through list list of questions about 4 times, adding and taking away from answers of each question. Each time I skipped this question because I could not think of anything, and I still can not. So either noth much embarrassing has happen to me, or I repressed it so deep - i can' even remember it now.

What do you consider to be your worst habit?
Spending too much time on the computer. With my son, I do often get off to play with him, read to him, take him for walks, etc... but more time should be spent with him and not the computer. (NOTE: The computer is actually in the living room, so a lot of the time I will turn, do something on the computer, tun back and do something with my son... back and forth.)

Let me ask the question you ask everybody: What question(s) did you hope would be asked, and what would your answer(s) have been?
Even though I did not hope the question would be asked, I was surprised that there were no political questions asked. How would I have answered? I would have probable tried to make a funny answer since I know this interview will be here long after Bush messes up America, so I'm glad I did not have to comment on that much. :-)