Soba

Soba is a former network administrator who lives in Rochester, New York, U.S.A. He attends and volunteers his time at a number of furry conventions, and served on Anthrocon's art show staff in 2005 and 2006. At any given convention's charity auction, he can usually be found in the front row.

He was introduced to the furry fandom in mid-1995 when he was part of the Internet's nascent Sonic the Hedgehog fan community that centered around the mailing list hosted on rat.org, and organized and ran the #sonic channel on the EFNet IRC network for several years under the name MilesProw. He also roleplayed in the Sonic the Hedgehog tinyplots on FictionMUCK and FluffMUCK as the canon character Rotor.

He has always enjoyed cartoons featuring anthropomorphic animals and has a keen interest in traditional animated shorts, predominantly from the 1950s and earlier.

Personal Details
He holds a bachelor's degree in Information Technology, having graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology with High Honors. He has worked since the late 1990s as a computer network administrator and is fond of the Unix family of operating systems, most notably OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and Mac OS X. He recently decided to retire from IT work altogether after finding it wholly unfulfilling, and now refers to himself as a recovering systems administrator. He has recently returned to graduate school to study printing.

He speaks, reads, and writes multiple languages. His knowledge of contemporary Japanese is at a near-native level of fluency, though his skill has degraded somewhat due to disuse. He also knows Mandarin Chinese and French, plus simple expressions in a smattering of other languages. (Coming from a fully Italian ethnic background, his knowledge of Italian profanity is extensive.)

He studied abroad in Kanazawa, Japan, in the year 2000, where he made a point of learning how to make soba noodles from a restauranteur of 25 years.

He is a vocal advocate of living a healthy lifestyle, having lost over 120 lbs (54kg) through permanent dietary changes and increased amounts of exercise.

Character Details
Soba is a North American brown bear and is often depicted in Japanese dress as a member of the mercantile class of the Japanese feudal period. However, the character is actually from the future and can be found in a variety of historical and mytho-historical contexts. He originated as a combination of his player's interests in mathematics, physics, linguistics, and Japanese history.

He can occasionally be seen on Sociopolitical Ramifications and FluffMUCK.