Did you find the right Eric Wagoner? This one went to High School in St. Clair, Missouri, graduating in 1989. I spent the next eight years in Socorro, New Mexico, attending school at New Mexico Tech, teaching Jr High, and being an engineer at the local electric cooperative. I ran the New Mexico Diplomacy Adjudicator, one of several email-based diplomacy servers running around the world. (Diplomacy is one of the best board games ever invented, marketed by Avalon Hill). I've been in Athens, Georgia for the last 2 1/2 years now. About half of the hits from web searches for "Eric Wagoner" do indeed refer to me, but there are quite a few for some fellow with championship show cows. That's not me.

About the Weblog

Kestrel's Nest is a weblog. Weblogs have been around since the dawn of the web, but were only named recently. This one has been around since October, 1999, a few weeks before the "Weblog Explosion". For more information on weblogs in general, see Jorn Berger's Weblog FAQ.

This weblog will contain tidbits of what I'm doing, thinking, and visiting at any given time. In weblog fashion, the posts read down from most recent to days past. Archives are kept and can be accessed in weekly chunks. The search function will go through everything I've written, going back to the beginning and including any ancillary pages I've written as well. The entries will vary widely in subject matter, but primarily my interests are in science (focusing in physics and astronomy), history, self-reliance, and computing. As the customer-support lead for Partner Software, software usability is a definite priority in my worklife. Even with the easiest software (as ours strives to be), things can and will go wrong. When it does, the problem needs to be diagnosed and fixed in the easiest way for the user, and it's my job to see this done.

Outside of work, I stay plenty busy by acting and directing theater, studying history (and living it in the Society for Creative Anachronism) and science, cooking, and playing the occasional game.

Why Kestrel's Nest?

I first started using the nickname Kestrel in Junior High, after reading Lloyd Alexander's Westmark series. The few times I got to play a character in Dungeons & Dragons (I was usually the Dungeon Master), I played a character named Kestrel, who was not a typical "super-hero" character. Instead of relying on strength or magic, he used his wits to work though the situations his party's adventures got him in.

Later, when I became active in the Society of Creative Anachronism, I kept the nickname Kestrel. Of course, Kestrel's not a real medieval name (on paper I'm known as a Saxon named Drogo), but that's what everyone knows me as. I've been able to explain the name thusly: in Europe, the Eurasian Kestrel has long been known as one of the more friendly birds of prey. It will happily nest in town (and some say even prefers it) while nesting and travelling around the countryside. So, a person in the country associated the Kestrel with visits from town, the spread of news, and so forth. My SCA persona is a Saxon who travelled from monastery to monastery spreading news and stories, and so got the nickname Kestrel.

When I began doing this weblog (first via email to unwitting if not receptive friends -- said one after a particularly fruitful day: "So, I take it that you are really enjoying your job..."), I realized that this was much the same thing, only a thousand years later. So, as this Kestrel hunts through the countryside, he brings news and stories here for you to share. Thanks for visiting, and make yourself at home.

Back to the Nest
The Old Page (A museum piece from my college days)