I suspect I've already put a fair bit of personal info out here, but let's consolidate.
I've been mathy and technophilic all my life. In Jr. High and High School, I added theater geek to these affiliations.
I am a huge fan of Weird Al and sincerely think he is badly underrated as a musician.
I was pretty widely disliked as a child. If a kid was assigned to sit by me on a bus or something, they'd usually get a "cootie shot" from one of their friends. This has left me persistently inclined to form aliefs about others actively disliking me. Thankfully, these aliefs are usually pretty widely divorced from reality these days.
Alicorn and I have tried dating, as well as not-dating. Between the two, we prefer dating.
Alicorn and I are some relatively conservative flavor of poly, which seems to suit me pretty much perfectly.
I live in an apartment in Berkeley with Alicorn, AnnaSalamon, and CarlShulman.
I don't always watch TV shows geared toward little girls, but when I do, I prefer My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
I grew up in some relatively harmless variant of Christianity. I still sing with our church choir if I'm home on a Sunday. Our pastor knows I'm now an atheist and once counseled me and my (Christian) then-girlfriend about our religious differences.
While Christian, I figured the proper way to do theology was to understand the conditions prevailing at the start of the universe, so I studied high-energy physics.
I have most of a Master's in physics. My first girlfriend dumped me a year into grad school, and I spent most of the next year depressed and pretty useless (well, except for my first few LW posts). Anna met me at a LW meetup and I wound up joining the 2009 summer fellows program. While there I further developed my programming ability, kibitzed with Rolf Nelson on his startup, and wound up with a job as a frontend engineer at Loggly, where I still work today.
I tend to listen to Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Christmas records on repeat around this time of year.
I sing. Most people who've heard me claim to be rather impressed by it. It's one of my favorite things to do. Alicorn and I sometimes go out for karaoke on Tuesdays.
I have ADD. I tend to forget things a lot. I am currently on my sixth laptop -- I tend to lose them/get them stolen.
I didn't get a driver's license until I was 24 and living with the Singinst fellows program (where hardly anyone could drive). Shortly thereafter I learned to drive stick, which I still miss doing. I probably drive faster than I should.
This has left me persistently inclined to form aliefs about others actively disliking me.
Since you said this, I feel the need to comment that I think you're an awesome person, and if you end up coming anywhere near Europe I wanna hang out with you again.
One of the things I loved about studying liberal arts is that you actually got to know your professors. They would discuss their personal experiences in a topic ("Here's what I did during the feminist movement.."), you might get slide shows from their vacation in the country of study, or even invited to their house for a group dinner.
Going into engineering was rather jarring for me in that regard. The vast majority of professors would come to class, lecture on the topic, and that would be it. They might share what their specific field of study was, but they rarely shared any personal details. It actually made it harder for me to learn, because it was like "Who is this person who is talking to me?"
(I think a large part of this for me personally was because I am motivated by a desire to please, and so if I liked my professors, then I wouldn't want to inconvenience them by handing things in late, or bore them by giving them another sub-par paper to read. But that's another discussion...)
I've noticed that Less Wrong is similar in some ways. We may know about each other's views on particular topics, and general fields of study, but we know very little about each other as people, unless a personal topic happens to be related to a particular rationalist study. Even the intro thread set up here focuses mainly on non-personal information.
For example, a Generic Intro post right now would be something like: "I'm X years old. From place Y. The fields I study/want to study are Z. Here's what college/HS was/is like for me. I have akrasia." Pretty boring, right? INSTEAD, the things I would be interested in knowing about my fellow LWers include: "On my time off I enjoy underwater basketweaving and climbing Mt Kilamanjaro. I have 6 young daughters and a dog named Grrr. I love pesto. etc"
From a rational perspective, an argument could be made that it's easier to have constructive arguments that remain civil when you humanize the people you are speaking with.
I was wondering how other LWers feel on the subject. Do you like that our discussions are un-hampered by personal data? Do you like the idea of providing personal intros? Do you not want to provide personalish information for safety reasons, or because you don't think it's anyone business?
If you think you might need help writing a personal intro, I wrote [a general guide](http://lesswrong.com/lw/8nq/more_personal_introductions/5d4e) on the topic in the comments below.
Note: I predict there will be two types of response to this post. People discussing how they feel about this (Meta-Comments), and people giving personal introductions (Intros). To make navigating the responses easier, I am trying an experiment where I set up a meta-comment thread and a personal introduction thread.
PLEASE PLACE COMMENTS ABOUT THIS IDEA IN META-COMMENT THREAD, AND COMMENTS INTRODUCING YOURSELF IN INTRO THREAD.
Edited to make it more clear to focus on personality, hobbies, likes/dislikes, and NOT on what you study, or school.
ETA- Added link to "How to Write Personal Intro" comment