Dave Ljung Madison FAQ

D a v e F A Q
T w o - - H i s t o r y / P e r s o n a l I n f o

Who are you?
Who are you not?
Where'd your name come from?
What does your name mean?
What's with the David Madison thing?
Where'd you come from?
How old are you?
Where/when were you born?
So when's your birthday?
Where are you now?
Where am I now?
Where are your homes?
What are you?
What's this 'dave++' I see you using?
What's this 'Dave ][+' I see you using?
How many broken/fractured bones have you had?
What is your Monster Manual entry?


1:   Who are you?
One of:
  David Jeffrey Ljung
  David Jeffrey Ljung Madison
  David Ljung Madison
  David Jeffrey Madison

2:   Who are you not?
I am not Dave Cain.

Who is Dave Cain?  He found my site and was surprised because he also:

1) Worked at HP and was fired for deviant web pages
2) Worked at a startup
3) Has written MarginalHacks type code, including an album maker, a web
   crawler, web server, email forger, search engine submitter (Java, not perl)
4) Rides a motorcycle
5) Is vegetarian
6) Does Burning Man

Weird

3:   Where'd your name come from?
My brother was born first, so 'Mike' was already taken.

You figure that maybe my parents could have come up with a more
original name, like 'SuperFlash' - but I guess they were pretty
busy with feeding us and all.

My last name - 'Ljung' - is Swedish.  Those Swedes don't know how
to spell.  It's pronounced "young."  As in "I'm youthful and I like
to put L's next to J's."  Evidently it's a fairly common name in
Sweden, which concerns me about their literacy problems.

Ljung means 'Heather.'  I'm sure there's at least one person out there
named Heather Ljung, I wonder if they know how silly their name is.

4:   What does your name mean?
From Parent Soup:

  David, a 2-syllable boy's name of Hebrew origin, means: Beloved one. 
  David's ethnic backgrounds include * Scottish * Swedish * Hebrew * 
  English/Welsh * German . It's religious association is biblical (see 
  * 1Sa 16:13-14).

  Jeffrey, a 2-syllable boy's name of Anglo-Saxon/Teutonic origin, 
  means: Gift of peace.

  Madison, a 3-syllable girl's name of Teutonic/Anglo-Saxon origin, 
  means: Gods; mighty.

  Ljung is Swedish for Heather (common American girls name)

I guess I'm only 50% boy.

According to the Census:

NAME           %FREQ   CUMM FREQ    RANK
----           -----   ---------    ----
DAVID          2.363     17.176        6
DAVE           0.053     77.316      271
JEFFREY        0.591     38.588       30
MADISON        0.011     44.471     1094
LJUNG          not found!  Dear god, I don't exist!

Ranking of David over the last few decades:
  1930		18th
  1940		7th
  1950		6th
  1960		1st
  1970		2nd
  1980		4th
  1990		5th

5:   What's with the David Madison thing?
I actually changed my name because I couldn't deal with "Ljung" anymore.

First of all, a disclaimer.  Ljung is an interesting last name.  I
joke and jest about it quite a bit, but I don't mean to offend people
with the name Ljung (such as my family, or 1/4th of the population of
Sweden).  If you're looking for a last name, I highly recommend it.
It's just not for me.

You try spelling 'Ljung' every single day to nimwits who can't digest
the concept of 'j' after 'l'.  To be fair, I can think of two words
that have 'lj' in them, though it's not like they're both silent.

For some reason, when I spell it, nice and slow, people will write down
'Lgung' half of the time.  Like 'lg' is easier to stomach or something.

Of all the people in my life who have had to pronounce my name from
reading it, I have heard it correct *once*

And here's my role call with every new teacher I've ever had:

"Johnson"                               "here"
"Jones"                                 "here"
"Kaplan"                                "here"
"Lewis"                                 "here"
"...umm... Dave?.."                     "here"

So for many years I've wanted to change my last name.  I had two requirements:

1)  It couldn't be common (such as Smith, Jones)
2)  It shouldn't have any spelling ambiguities (such as Meyer/Meier..)

After some thought, I realized that the name of the city I was born
in, and the city that I went to school in, and a city that I love
dearly, perfectly met the two conditions above.

Fortunately I realized that "David Madison Wisconsin" was too long to spell,
so I just chose "David Madison"

The irony, of course, is that I had just purchased the domain
DavidLjung.com a few months before, specifically for the permanence
of it all.  Oops.

It takes months to legally change your name unless you are getting married.
You have to file a petition, post a public notice in a local newspaper for
four weeks, and present yourself before a judge.  Yeesh.  I should have found
someone named Madison to marry, it would've been easier.

Also, David Madison gives me an anagram for my name: "Add mad vision"
not to mention the anagram "DNS Domain Diva" which perhaps explains
my domain proclivities.

Now, unfortunately I've learned something else about the difficulties
of changing one's name.  Just because you legally change your name doesn't
mean that you'll actually feel like that's your name.  So now I don't
feel like David Madison, and I don't feel like David Ljung either.
How's that for a loss of identity?

I've recently learned, however, that the name 'Ljung' is somewhat made
up (at least for my family).  It's a Swedish name, but my great great
grandfather John Jonson (Johnson) decided to change his last name to
Ljung when he immigrated in 1881.  So 'Ljung' is an arbitrary last
name for me as well, it's just older in it's arbitrariness.

6:   Where'd you come from?
Well - apart from the obvious joke about my parents, I lived in the
following cities:

  Madison, WI            Good place
  West Chicago, IL        Bad place
  North Haven, CT        Good place
  Geneva, IL              Bad place
  Madison, WI            Good place
  Fort Collins, CO        Bad place
  San Francisco, CA      Good place

See a pattern?

I've learned this much.  I can never move again.  Or if I do, I have to
first make a "sacrificial move" - like to Iowa or something.

7:   How old are you?
Like numerous famous people, I have a countdown clock till my next
birthday at fansites.com.

8:   Where/when were you born?
The fantastic city of Madison, Wisconsin, at about 7pm on December 3rd,
1971.  It's interesting to note that the day I was born (12/03) is also the
most common code you'll see on those signs they put on the back of
tankers to let you know that the contents are flammable (1203 = gasoline)

9:   So when's your birthday?
It may seem clear that my birthday would be December 3rd, but not quite.
After I had been dancing for many years, I decided that at 10 years of
dancing (on 2006/11/08) I would start celebrating my dance birthday instead
of my physical birthday.  For those of you used to seeing me get older in
December, you'll have to adjust back about a month.  :)

I mentioned this to my mom in a phone call, and through it learned
about my mom's gullibility as well as the little known Legal Birthday
Ramifications Institute (or LBRI for short, of course).

10:  Where are you now?
In the amazing city of San Francisco.
Send me email for my address/phone.

11:  Where am I now?
Right here.  Pay attention.

12:  Where are your homes?
Here is a map of what has been or are currently my homes, in a
quasi-chronological order (though my current apartment is the top)

13:  What are you?
I'm a carbon/water based bi-pedal lifeform.  So are you, probably.
More specifically, I'm mix of things.  I'm mostly northern european, meaning
I'm a Viking.  Here's the breakdown:
  Dad's dad	Swedish (viking)
  Dad's mom	Norwegian (viking)
  Mom's dad	Polish (viking)
  Mom's mom	Polish (viking), Danish (viking) and other less-vikingy things.

That's where the hair comes from.  And the irrepressible urge to conquer Europe.

14:  What's this 'dave++' I see you using?
It's a net nickname.  In many programming languages you can increment
a variable with '++.'  It can come before or after the variable name,
which decides whether the evaluation of the expression is before or
after the increment.
Hence, 'dave++' means the value of dave, then increment one.

15:  What's this 'Dave ][+' I see you using?
In 1976 Apple computer introduced the Apple I in a wooden case,
running the blazing fast 6502 at 1MHz, and with 8k RAM.

In 1979 they introduced the Apple II+, now with a plastic case and
a whopping 48k RAM.


I suppose one way to read that is that I'm six times bigger than a
normal Dave, and I come in an attractive beige case, ready for sale!

Or just that I'm a Dave upgrade.

16:  How many broken/fractured bones have you had?
At least 10 that I know of:

  right wrist  Fell off slide like big dork, fell 13 feet and whammo
  right leg    Compression fracture, skiing in Colorado with family (pre-1989).
               I knew this was broken though my family didn't believe me.
  nose         Wrapped a car around a tree, Xmas 1992-3?  Didn't know it was
               even injured until the x-ray tech told me.
  finger       Hit tree skiing at Vail, whammo!  Now it's bent funny.  Didn't
               know it was broken till it didn't straighten out, though it
               sure hurt at the time.
               
  jaw/tooth    Inline Skating - around 1997?  Just a chip (didn't need it wired
               shut).  Didn't know it was broken till the chip from my jaw worked
               it's way out through my chin.  The tooth was broken too, which
               I also didn't know it was broken until I needed a root canal
               because my tooth was evidently broken too.
  left ankle   Unknown date - never realized it was broken until I reinjured
               it at Catalina Island after the dance camp July 1999.  When
               I had it X-Rayed the doctor asked me when it was broken the
               first time and I was unsure.  He wanted a history of all my
               prior injuries and I couldn't remember them.  He asked me if
               I was a football player or something.  That was pretty funny.
               I think the original break occured skiing, either at Arapahoe
               Basin (cliff jumping) or 1/29/1995 at Winter Park (impressing a female).
  left wrist   On 7/21/2000 I had a motorcycle accident described at DaveHistory
  right thumb  Same accident, once again I didn't know it was broken - they
               X-Rayed it a few days later because it was still sore.
  tooth        Same accident - I had a chipped tooth and didn't notice it until
               a friend pointed it out to me.
  toe?         I think I broke my big toe on 12/1/2002, but I haven't xrayed
               it and it isn't causing me enough problems to check.
  ?            Might have more.  It seems I don't know when I break my bones,
               and I like to hit trees.

Danger is my middle name.

17:  What is your Monster Manual entry?
DAVEOLA (Fuzzlemonkey)
FREQUENCY: Rare
NO. APPEARING: 1
ARMOR CLASS: -2
MOVE: 10'/rd
HIT DICE/POINTS: 50d6+100
% IN LAIR: 60
TREASURE TYPE: Swing shoes, old games
NO. OF ATTACKS: 3
DAMAGE/ATTACK: 10d6
SPECIAL ATTACKS: Scathing wit
SPECIAL DEFENSES: Flight
MAGIC RESISTANCE: 98%
INTELLIGENCE: Very
ALIGNMENT: Chaotic Neutral
SIZE: XL in shirts, 32/32 in pants
PSIONIC ABILITY: Nil
  Attack/Defense Modes: Nil
LEVEL/X.P. VALUE: X/70,000

Created by make_faq from Marginal Hacks