More about me!

Now you've done it. You've decided that you want to know more about who this James Milne character is. Well, so be it. I was born July 30, 1975, in Rochester, Minnesota to the (I'm assuming) proud couple of Robert and Jean Milne. I was delivered in St. Mary's Hospital, which is part of the Mayo Clinic. My parents and I moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, when I was about 1 year old. Shortly thereafter, my parents provided me with two sisters, Jeanna and Terri, to torment and complain about.

I attended elementary school at Truman Elementary, then known as the Trojans, but now known as the Tigers. My middle school was Taft, and I attended Jefferson High School.

Favorite topics in school included science and history. I also took part in the band (trumpet and French horn), chorus (depending on my age, tenor or baritone), tennis (I even won a few matches!), show choir (I learned quickly that I can't dance!), National Honor Society, Academic Decathlon, general mayhem and uproar. Somehow through it all, I managed to graduate and make it to college.

I had many options for college: University of Colorado at Boulder, Arizona State University, and Iowa State University were my top three choices, and I ended up here at ISU. I started out in the fall of 1993, majoring in Aerospace Engineering, and stayed there for two years, but in the summer of 1995, I switched majors to Computer Engineering. I've also completed all the course work for a minor in History, and am currently in the process of formally declaring my minor.

Vital Statistics

Eyes: Hazel (I'm also near-sighted and have astigmatism)
Hair: Started out blond, turned brown around the age of 12.
Height: Started out at about 27 inches, now I'm around 6 ft. 2 in.
Weight: 9 lb. 6 oz. my first day, 155 lb. last time I checked.
Blood Type: A positive

Personal Preferences

Favorite colors: pine green, royal blue
Favorite food: cheesecake

What I do: Besides the obvious homework and working on my web pages, I manage to fill my time with playing some racquetball, doing some star gazing, playing the occassional computer game, lots of reading, watching TV, listening to music, etc.

What I listen to: Phil Collins, Wynton Marsalis, and Lisa Loeb, currently. I'm also a big fan of Beethoven, Mozart, Mussorgsky, and Tchaikovsky.

What I watch: The X-Files, Seinfeld, Friends, and whatever movies happen to be showing.

What I like to read: Favorites include The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan, the fantasy series of David Eddings, Victor Hugo's Les Miserables and Notre Dame de Paris (English translations, of course), Jules Verne and some other things... I always love a good book.

Some Photos!!

Please forgive the quality of the photos, but I'm using old photos and a school scanner which sees some heavy use. Some more bad news: I can't find a picture of myself that is less than three years old, and I don't even have a copy of those (graduation photos!). So, you'll have to wait to see what I look like now. Just imagine me with brown hair, glasses, thinner....

Here's me at the ripe old age of just a few months. Obviously, I must have had a happy childhood. Of course, that was back when I was still the only child...my sisters had yet to make their first appearance and steal the spotlight away from me.

This is me, a bit older. This photo was taken when I was about five or six years old. My hair is a bit darker now, and when I choose my own shirts, I usually pick solid colors, instead of stripes. Not to mention that my vision back then was still pretty good (in fact, it was rated at better than average back then!).

This is the only photo I have of my family all together, back from around 1980, maybe '81. (We had a family photo taken around 1989, but I couldn't find it...I'll have to look harder.) Terri is on the left, Jeanna is on the right below me. My father has gray in his hair now, and ditched the sideburns, my mother has shorter hair and ditched the glasses for contacts.

This is a photo of my sisters, taken just recently. Jeanna is age 17, Terri is age 16. (Terri's the blond, Jeanna the brunette.) My wonderful sisters gave me this photo as their Christmas gift to me this year. Apparently, I'm either hard to buy a gift for, or they're cheap. Jeanna says to tell people that I turned out as good as they did, but to tell the truth, I think my sisters got the looks in the family. Of course, you could judge for yourself...

Here's a more recent photo of myself. That's me on the right, looking extremely pale. On the left is my roommate, and best friend, Tim Smith. There in the middle is Steve Leung, who lives in the dorms, and is the reason that this photo was taken. He was taking photos of everyone on the floor. Lucky for you all, or you would have been stuck with that photo of me from 1st grade to base your impression of me on.

The Nicknames

Throughout my life, I've had many nicknames, most of which I can actually put here for the public to see!

Jamie: This is the name that most of my relatives call me by, and what everybody called me by up until around the 3rd grade, when I started going by the more grown-up sounding James. To this day, my mother is upset that she even gave me the option of using a name besides Jamie. Even though I always name myself as James, I think of myself as Jamie.
Jim: A much-hated and seldom seen nickname. I've just never been a Jim, and about the only people who get away with calling me Jim are my dentist (Correcting him with a drill in my mouth doesn't seem the best of ideas.), my doctor (I'm not fool enough to upset someone with needles lying about nor give him any thoughts with my "anal" attitude about my name.), and people I know I'll never see again in my lifetime (It's not worth the trouble.) I have a cousin James that goes by Jim in the family, and I go by Jamie. That's just the way it's always been.
Milne: There are two different varieties of this. The first is performed shrieking at the top of your lungs: "MILL-NEE!!!" This version was created by a long-time friend/enemy of mine, Melissa Taylor, and employed by various upset people, usually after realizing they were the recipiant of some practical joke. The other variety is still pronounced "mill-nee", but said in a much calmer, soothing voice. It should be noted that the correct pronounciation of my last name is "miln", one syllable, but "mill-nee" is very popular, considering that for some unknown reason, people have trouble with "miln" and pronounce it "melon". (To this day, when we talk about my great-grandmother, we always pronounce her name "melon". It's just what everyone knew her as.) My family is baffled by this occurance, so we usually just tell people to pronounce it "mill-nee" to make it easier on our ears. I'm slowly trying to bring back the original and correct pronounciation, but I'll respond to almost anything that comes close. (There was a time, however, when one of my teachers was doing role call and I kept looking around the room, wondering who this "Jim Malign" guy was.)
Howard: My cousins gave me this nickname because I bothered them with my constant talking. My namesake for this nickname was Howard Cossell, sportscaster for ABC. (I have since learned how to shut up and let others get a word in edge-wise once in a while.)
Professor: I got this nickname from one of my teachers during the fourth grade after starring in the school play. The name of my character was The Professor. This nickname enjoyed short bursts of popularity, as I seemed to attract the roles of professors during my drama career. (I got about four roles where I played a professor-type character.)
Edison: Another part in a play. The same play also saw the nickname Professor appearing more often.
J. L.: My brief encounter with initials. It just didn't seem to have the same popularity as other intial combinations, like T.J. and J.R.
Clumsy: An apt description of me. There isn't a week that goes by that I don't break something, run into a door or wall, or just collapse for no good reason. Some of my clumsy highlights: I destroyed a biology experiment in high school, scattering bacteria and growth medium everywhere; during a Physics class in high school, a group of guys, including myself, lost control of about an ounce of mercury and spent the next hour trying to catch it all before it escaped the room; varied car accidents; numerous sports injuries; falling out of trees; etc.

My full name is James Lee Milne. I was named after both of my grandfathers: James Arland Milne and Leo Emmett McCarville. My parents thought James Lee rolled off the tongue better than James Leo, but that's how I got it. Or so I'm told...

My Philosophy

By shear trial and error, I've found a few things to be true, at least in my life. One of my most important lessons:

When all else fails, do something stupid.

You'd be surprised at how many problems solve themselves when you do something incredibly foolish. Of course, there is also an increase in the amount of havoc, usually resulting from your stupid action, but that's a separate problem entirely.

Another important lesson I've learned is that my friends and family are the most important things in the world to me. They've supported me throughout many embarrassing moments and been there to praise me in my (less frequent) shining moments. There isn't anything I wouldn't do for them. (Well, almost anything...)

Varied Information

I got the chicken pox in the 4th grade, broke my left arm in the summer of '86, got my first pair of glasses in the 6th grade (my baseball batting average immediately improved), lived through my voice changing during a solo I was singing before most of Taft Middle School, got in my first auto accident one month after getting my license (Sept. 6, 1991), kissed my first girl at the age of 16, was sued in '93 (remember that car accident?), and my friends often accuse me of insanity. (It's a conspiracy, I tell you! A conspiracy!)

I'm a medical oddity. I say that because for some odd reason, doctors are obsessed with drawing my blood. I must be incredibly pale, because each time I step into a doctor's office, the first words they mutter are "We need to have a hemoglobin test done right away." Maybe I'd have a bit more color if they didn't keep taking my blood! (Which brings up a funny thing....I love to visit the doctor right after donating blood. Heheheh. The way they react, you'd think I was lying on the ground with a guy holding paddles on me yelling, "Clear!") It doesn't help that I have lower-than-average blood pressure, and a normally low-grade temperature. I don't know what the problem is, because every time, the results come back with a slightly better than average iron count, and an average red cell count for someone of my weight. I've been trying to cultivate dark body hair, to give me the illussion of a tan. So far the results have been...less than enthusiastic.

My family has had two dogs, one a cocker spaniel named Bridget (died in '90), and most recently, a Pomeranian/something mix named Missy. A family of squirrels lives in the tree in our back yard, providing hours of entertainment for Missy as she tries to catch one. So far, their confrontations have ended in a stalemate: the squirrels are afraid to come out of the tree, and Missy usually tires of waiting for them to try. Our vegetable garden is an unfortunate casualty of their confrontations...it lies directly in the path of our back door to a favorite roost of the squirrels... Missy took out our entire crop of onions and most of the cucumbers this year in her efforts to catch a squirrel.

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