I've been commenting for a little while, but it was requested that I post here, so, here I am.

I'm a 27 year old female programmer, currently working from home on complex Second Life projects. The company I work with is in the process of expanding into the OpenSim realm, so I'll be learning that soon as well. I'm mostly self-taught when it comes to programming, and did not go to college at all. I also recently left my 'day job' of working in the activity department of a nursing home; I held that job for four years, and had various retail jobs before that, mostly cashiering.

I'm deeply interested in brain function, mind function, neurology, and most related topics. One of my closest friends is a retired professor of neurology, so I do get to discuss those topics fairly regularly. I tend to be a bit aggressive about accepting unusual neurologies as natural variation, and have a distinct personal interest in that ideology, as I'm not neurotypical myself.

I was diagnosed as being ADD when I was five, but personal research has led me to the conclusion that I'm almost certainly autistic, with (now-)occasional attention issues depending on how much mental overload I'm dealing with at the moment. I am moderately faceblind, have several sensory sensitivities, intermittent sensory processing difficulties of various degrees of severity, occasional motor planning difficulties, poor episodic memory, and difficulties processing normal-style social signals. I also have an excellent semantic memory, excellent pattern-matching capability, perfect pitch, several other minor-to-moderate sensory advantages, and, apparently, a much better ability to 'see' what my own mind is doing than was previously thought possible. (I know the last one probably sounds unbelievable. From this perspective, I had a hard time believing that normal people couldn't perceive their brainbits activating to work on a problem, and probably wouldn't've believed it at all if I didn't know someone who's studied that specifically... and even then, I found it incredible enough of a limitation that I confirmed it for myself with a few carefully-placed questions to other friends.) I also have an unusual emotional system - I am not and would not try to be completely unemotional, but my emotions tend to be relatively 'quiet' and not distracting, which makes certain tasks, particularly rational ones, much easier.

I am currently starting a neurodiversity-related project called The Neuroversity. The web page is very much still under construction, but there's a description of the project, and the forum is open to anyone who's interested.

I have several different angles of interest in social signaling, most notably how and why normal people use it. I've also noticed that there are several different 'layers' of social signals, some of which I'm actually quite good at noticing and parsing, and I'd like to figure out why, but I don't have much to go on, there. Another angle of interest is non-human social signaling, which I am in some cases quite good at understanding, and which most people seem to underestimate the sophistication of.

I'm a member of Play as Being, an open-source meditation group. The group itself is not religious, but religion is often discussed there, so it may or may not be if interest to anyone here. That said, the meditation exercises can be very useful, and many of the discussions are very interesting.

I also tend to be very open about my life, and am certainly willing to answer questions. :)