87 Eye-Catching Facts About Richard Lowe

Facts about Richard Lowe (me)

1. I am the owner of The Writing King, which provides all kinds of writing services from ghostwriting to cybersecurity technical writing.
2. Until November 2013, I managed a gaggle of computer geeks. There are eight computer geeks to a gaggle.
3. From my earliest memory, I’ve been fascinated by geology and history. The first adult level book I read was when I was seven; it was the history of the battle of Iwo Jima in World War II. I read everything I could find about that battle, a total of over 20 books.
4. At one point, I owned 170 domain names and maintained over a dozen personal web sites. I have since cut that down to a dozen domains and 3 sites.
5. I began working in the computer fiend in 1979 for a company called Software Techniques. I was hired out of college by my professor who was starting a consulting company. One week I was the daily manager for a market, in college and living at home with my parents; the next week I had moved to Orange County, was a computer geek, and had my own place.
6. I have written thousands of articles, most for my own personal web sites, and published over a hundred in various computer journals.
7. As a ghostwriter, I have written over 48 books for clients.
8. I own the original and animated Star Trek series, Deep Space Nine, CSI, Monty Pythons Flying Circus, Outer Limits, Twilight Zone and Battlestar Galactica.
9. I used to own two video game consoles but haven’t played a video game in over ten years. One was an Xbox 360, and the other was ancient, the Nintendo 64.
10. I am a very creative person, and spend long hours writing articles, creating graphics art and photographing nature, renaissance festivals, and belly dancers. I’ve got over 900,000 pictures on my photography web site that I took between 2005 and 2013.
11. I have scanned all the film photos which I had taken over my lifetime; over 2,000 photo negatives (all that I had) using a service to convert negatives into digital format.
12. I always check twice to make sure my doors are locked.
13. I am very religious but tend to keep my religious beliefs private. I’ll be happy to have a discussion about my beliefs with anyone in person (but not online please). The absolute best way to lose me as a friend forever is to mock my religious beliefs.
14. I was married to a Guatemalan lady named Claudia when I was 33 years old. She was five years older. We were married after dating for 3 weeks, and we were married four times within the space of 2 weeks. There’s quite an interesting story behind that… Claudia passed away on February 1st, 2005, at 10:27 am due to sepsis.
15. I love dressing up in costume. The Labyrinth of Jereth is my favorite event of the year.
16. I never talk (or write) trash about anyone. I prefer to encourage people by mentioning their strong points and complementing them when they do well. My comments are always honest, and I do not just complement people unless they deserve to be complemented. But I would prefer to say nothing if there is nothing good to say.
17. I have never tasted alcohol, never smoked, never used any illegal drug of any kind, and never gambled.
18. My grandfather was in the Navy in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He was a crewmember on a patrol boat, part of the Yangtze River patrol just before World War II. He was captured by the Japanese on Corregidor and spent four years in a POW camp in Japan.
19. I have my genealogy going back about 300 years on both sides, and I have my genetic profile both maternal and paternal.
20. I am currently working on a series of 10 science fiction novels, a dozen non-fiction books, and a dozen more fiction books in various genres.
21. I am enjoying being single and unattached, but I have this feeling that sometime soon some nice lady is going to realize I am single, make a nice living, and have no vile habits…
22. I can perform math in binary, octal, decimal and hex.
23. One day I purchased a chinchilla for my late wife which she named Dexter. She loved the animal, and he was very cute. He didn’t love long, but he cheered her up while he was alive.
24. I had a cat named Zeya.
25. I have painted over 1,500 small lead fantasy miniatures.
26. I owned the original Dungeons and Dragons books, plus most of the other role-playing games out in the late 1970s. (I have sold them since this was written).
27. My favorite books are Lord of the Rings and Stranger in a Strange Land (which is also the first science fiction book I ever read).
28. I remember the face of my doctor when I was born.
29. I am an Air Force brat.
30. I started photographing at the Irwindale Renaissance Pleasure Faire because it helped me overcome the grief after my wife passed away. I found the faire people were very supportive during that time of my life.
31. I photographed belly dancers because I enjoy the aesthetics of the dance. It helps me wash away the stress of life and makes me feel good about the universe.
32. I am CERT trained – Community Emergency Response Team, as well as an expert in disaster recovery and business continuity.
33. I am a trained computer security expert.
34. The fact that I never raised children is a source of great sadness to me (Claudia was unable to have children).
35. My favorite places are Joshua Tree National Park and the Grand Canyon.
36. I have a dream to visit the top of Mount San Gorgonio, the great pyramids of Egypt, the battlefield where Alexander defeated Darius the Great, Athens, Tonga and Rome.
37. One of my goals is to visit and photograph every national park in North America.
38. One of my favorite artists is Luis Royo.
39. I enjoy movies and have over 3,500 DVDs and Blu-ray’s in my collection.
40. I hated the beach for most of my life and avoided it like the plague, until one day I confronted that fear, and now I love the beach.
41. My first visit outside the country was to Ensenada on the Arabian Knights at Sea Cruise a few years ago.
42. I do not fear death in any way.
43. I watched the original Star Trek series when it was first aired in the mid-1960s.
44. The most surprising thing in my life was for me to realize I was a widower at age 45.
45. When I was a small child, my parents and I visited the beach. I got a sunburn so bad that I was deathly afraid of the beach and ocean and didn’t visit it again until many years later. Now I love the beach and ocean (and wear suntan lotion).
46. The first faire I visited was in Devore in, I believe, 1986.
47. I am a history buff and thoroughly enjoy reading anything related to Rome, Greece, and Egypt.
48. I drive at the speed limit or below. I use cruise control to keep my speed where I want it.
49. My sister runs a private school in San Jose.
50. I have an IQ of 150.
51. A few days after my wife passed away, I drove to Joshua Tree national park and spent half the day sitting on top of a place called Skull Rock.
52. I still have my wisdom teeth and appendix.
53. I have never had surgery.
54. I think the original 3 Star Wars movies are among the best movies of all time, and the second trilogy is among the worst.
55. I usually know when someone is calling, and who that person is, before my phone rings.
56. One of my major life goals is to visit all of the major caves in the free world.
57. In the last twenty years, I have taken over 100 classes, everything from geology to computer science to writing.
58. Between the ages of 19 and 33 I was so painfully introverted that I worked the night shift, rarely talked to anyone and never said anything I didn’t have to. There were times I would go weeks without saying a word to anyone.
59. I played the original Dungeon game on the VAX (later known as ZORK) to within a few points of the endgame.
60. Christmas is the most depressing time of year for me.
61. I own virtually all of the stamps from the island of Tonga.
62. I have lived through a 7.1 earthquake.
63. When I was young, I sold Burpee seeds so I could get a telescope. I didn’t sell any, so my parents bought them all from me so I could get the telescope. We had the best flower gardens in the neighborhood.
64. I love cartoons, especially Bugs Bunny.
65. When I first picked up Lord of the Rings in high school, it took me a year to get past the first 50 pages. Then I read the reminder in a weekend, and then read it again the following weekend (yes, the whole trilogy).
66. I grew up in the Inland Empire, moving from San Bernardino to Lake Arrowhead between 8th and 9th grade (Junior high and High school). I hated everything about the mountains while I was living there and moved away as soon as I found a decent job after turning 18.
67. My first “real” job was the night liquor manager at the liquor store in the old Lake Arrowhead village. My boss was a German submarine commander from World War II. I used the money from this job to buy a brand-new car, a Toyota, and I paid every payment myself.
68. I became interested in belly dancing when I was 44, shortly after my wife (Claudia) passed away. I was very caved in, almost totally introverted, by my late wife’s death, and something about belly dance helped to pull me out of my despair. Watching dancers perform never fails to lift me up and make me feel good about life.
69. I first went to Renaissance faire in 1986 at Devore, and I went once, and only once, per year after that until late 2004, when I went twice. On the way home from the second faire I had one of those turning points in life that changed me forever. I decided to come back to life (this was before Claudia passed away). The change in my presence and life was immediate and profound.
70. The first time I went to Catalina Island was to scatter the ashes of my wife’s mother in the year 2000. I visited again just two days before Claudia passed away with one of my best friends. I had no clue how sick Claudia was that day, but she passed away two days later from Sepsis. A week after that, I traveled to Catalina Island for a third time to scatter Claudia’s ashes. I had no last wishes from her and felt she would like to be with her mother on the same island. There was a major storm that day, and I chartered a small boat and friend, and I went out about a mile offshore. There were waterspouts and it was raining heavily. As I scattered the ashes the rain stopped, and the sun came out for a few minutes. As we moved away, back to shore, I looked back and saw over three hundred birds slowly circling up from the ocean where I had laid her ashes moments before.
71. In elementary school I was beat up virtually every day in the way to school and home by several bullies. I learned to hide and not be seen as a survival tool. As I moved into Junior high school, I became painfully introverted, and throughout high school I was so shy that few people even knew I existed.
72. I have written over 1,000 articles.
73. I love to create. I am an author, a web designer, artist, graphics artist, photographer, and I’m learning to be a videographer.
74. My attitude about life is life is to be lived. I flourish and prosper.
75. I am not sure I will ever get married again. The last marriage, with Claudia being critically ill for over nine years, was a very hard experience.
76. I firmly believe that life is what you make it. People make their own hells and their own heavens and everything in between.
77. I love going to museums with a lady friend.
78. I believe a rainbow is a sign of good luck, life and prosperity, and most especially change for the better (although that is not always obvious at the time). Since December I have seen over a dozen rainbows, which is three times as many as in my entire life before.
79. I am an expert at disaster recovery, a CERT member (community emergency response team) and an expert at business continuity. My first disaster recovery project was an assignment to recovering the computers at the Public Broadcasting System in Washington DC after a major fire.
80. I have one surviving sister and three other sisters who died at various times in their childhood, including one that was older than me.
81. I have several tattoos: a dragon on one shoulder, a phoenix on the other, and a coral snake on each arm. The dragon is me. Dragons are kind, compassionate, smart, etc … but you don’t mess with dragons. The phoenix is the way I view my life.
82. I have a list of a dozen places on Earth that I will visit before I die. I will not name them all here, but they include the place where Alexander defeated Darius the Great in Turkey, the Island kingdom of Tonga, Rome and a certain place on the Rhine in Switzerland. Each place as a certain meaning to me.
83. When Claudia, my late wife, became critically ill and remained ill for over nine years, all but one of my friends (Ken Cureton) found other places to be. I learned to completely trust myself and I learned how strong I am spiritually at that time. This was the most difficult time of my life and I somehow lived through it and came out the other side a million times stronger than I went in. I literally pulled Claudia back from death twice, until sepsis finally took her away.
84. I’ve seen half a dozen tarot card readers and others who claim to use one means or another to forecast the future. Every one of them has said exactly the same thing about my future.
85. I want to produce a major belly dance festival, with an entire weekend of workshops, vending and shows. Perhaps I’ll do so when the economy gets better.
86. Unlike most people, I know what I am searching for.
87. I have published two Kindle bestselling books, Focus on LinkedIn and How to Sell On eBay.