My name is Mike (Pagedoll). I live in sunny southern California and am a San Diego native.

My hobbies include, Kicking up the sand in Glamis, “The sand toy capital of the world”. Cruising the beach on my bike. Occasionally racing ABA BMX at the local track, as well as a few nationals. Indoor go-karting, a swift round of paintball, and of course, hanging out on the HotForWords site.

My job is in the construction field, hardwood flooring sand & finish to be exact. I’ve been finishing floors for a little over 20 years now and take great pride in the work I do. My attention to detail has allowed me to work in some of the finest(and biggest) homes in San Diego.

I came across the HFW site over a year ago while clicking through YouTube for the very first time and have been hooked ever since. After watching I said to my self, “This girl is going places”. How understated that was. In the past year I’ve watched Marina go from a kitchen as a background to a blue screen, HD, and Twitpics from Cannes. Something tells me this adventure is far from over! Thank you Marina for taking us all along for the ride with you, its been a blast!!

People have often asked me about my screen name and its origins. This is my brief explanation. I have a wonderful friend named Page. I’ve known her my whole life and care about her as if she were my little sister.

We like going to concerts together, visiting Las Vegas every now and again for a weekend of madness, trying out fancy restaurants, watching episodes of Entourage, and just hanging out. Some words I would use to describe Page would be, beautiful, astute, elegant, witty, charming, and yes, Doll. As for the gravatar, Cinderella, in some ways, reminds me of her.

(Artwork by, Damiana)

Here’s a (little) snippet Kent wrote for his biography.
I spent much of my childhood in the Upper Ohio Valley, where the Allegheny Mountains give way to rolling hills and Pennsylvania meets the states of West Virginia and Ohio. My parents both hold teaching credentials from a state school in upstate New York, where my Dad earned an English degree and my Mom earned a music degree. Since both my parents were teachers, we kids were constantly corrected on word usage and sentence construction, starting at an early age. I learned to read before I entered kindergarten, mostly because my Mom really enjoyed reading to us every night and always encouraged us to actively participate in the process. I was placed in advanced reading groups and excelled at spelling, but I was small for my age, so public school wasn’t a whole lot of fun for me. I loved the outdoors, however, and spent my summers barefoot, poking around creeks and forests and going camping with my family and friends whenever possible.

California was one of the places I visited during my travels, and I liked the idea of having access to both mountains and seacoast, so I moved to Northern California to start community college and have been here ever since. I studied French, anthropology, creative writing, geology, painting, design, judo, and mountaineering among many others. I found that I enjoyed rock climbing in the Sierra Nevada range quite a bit, but I still had to work for a living. Mostly, I did anything that I could to support my addiction to outdoor activities such as camping and rock climbing.

Quite by accident, I began work as a proofreader and eventually a graphic artist at some local newspapers. This seemed a good match for me until the advent of cheap desktop PCs, automated spell-checking, which all but replaced paste-up artists and proofreaders in the early 90s. So I found employment in the reprographic industry where I did large-scale production runs.

It was time to combine my urge to be outside with my passion for learning about nature. Interpretive ranger work seemed an excellent choice. I studied environmental conservation, and received Associate degrees in Natural Science as well as Parks and Recreation Management. Then I went on to a state university to finish out a bachelors degree program in Anthropology. I even worked as a seasonal ranger a couple summers to gain experience while in school.

It was during my bachelor’s degree program that I discovered YouTube when an instructor assigned a couple videos for the class to watch and evaluate. Once I was at the site, it was obvious that Marina’s videos were going to be mighty hard to pass up. I became a member after watching only two lessons. Soon I had to take care not to let HotForWords absorb all my study time!

As I completed my degree program, the economy fell through the floor. The National Park Service has cut its job rosters back. Now that school is done, I’m finally a free agent again. In the meantime, I look in on our dear teacher whenever I have a spare moment and she always makes me smile. – Pennsyltucky9

PedanticKarl

You can call me Karl Newman, PedanticKarl, PK or just Karl but just make sure to never call me late for a new viewing of a HotForWords lesson. Because of my thoughtful and generous nature, some of my friends lovingly call me Klaus, Santa Klaus, Santa, or just St. Nick and other endearing names.

I am blissfully single in Southern California, and being the perennial romantic optimist, I am looking forward to an ecstatic and soulful relationship some day. The good news is that there is no one to tell me when my daily allotment of HotForWords viewing is exceeded. The bad news is, that there is no one to tell me when my daily allotment of HotForWords viewing is exceeded. What?  You expect me to have common sense?

My background is in both software and electronic hardware technology and I call myself a technologist, or sometimes geek, but never nerd. I have way too many hobbies and particularly enjoy dabbling in the visual arts such as painting, photography and creating videos, and studying history and the origins of words. To keep myself grounded, I enjoy getting my hands dirty in gardening and creating pleasing landscapes.

What you may find interesting is how I happened to come across the HotForWords You Tube channel. I had been watching You Tube videos before Google bought them, and early in 2007 I was doing some very intense research into the origins of the names of countries and cities in Europe, which led me to a variety of subjects and word origins. I read someplace about the many unchartered word origins in Eastern Europe and that an etymologist would be richly rewarded if they took up this challenge.

As I took my research to You Tube, I came across Marina’s channel and later found her videos to be on the “Most Viewed” pages. I casually followed her videos from early 2007, but did not take notice of her keen sense of humor and style until the “Dime and Penny” video. I continued to follow Marina’s videos, thinking that she probably belonged to some organization, not unlike “LonelyGirl15″. Later I learned more about Marina’s values and core beliefs through one of her videos, wich made me a fan, but I did not subscribe to her until June of 2008 after seeing the fantastic job that she did with the HotForWords web site.

Through Marina’s videos and comments, she has become a sort of mentor to me. Marina doesn’t know that, so don’t tell her. It is unbelievable what I have learned from Marina’s videos and I have some interesting stories to tell regarding my new-found knowledge. I have never met Marina, and only know her through her videos and comments. It is a wonderful privilege and an honor to serve Marina and the HotForWords community.

Sincerely yours,
Karl

The Official International Talk Like a Pirate Day website.

Lesson # 1

Talk Like a Pirate Day: The Five A’s

Lesson # 2

How To Talk Like a Pirate

Lesson # 3

Now Try Out Your Singing Pirate Voice: You Are A Pirate (Lazy Town)

Lesson #4

Work On Fighting Technique Against a Ninja

Now you’re well on you way to celebrating International Talk Like a Pirate Day !

Now go and getrr booty you scurvy sea-dogs, before I have you keel-hauled!

- Captain Jack

I wanted to keep you posted on some projects I have been working on for HTW. Many of you have given me some new ideas for HFW site. Alx, had an idea for a glossary of words that some of us know about but not others. For example the word morpheme. Sure anyone could look it up, but how would you add it to your vocabulary without knowing how to use it in a conversation? Alx sees that a glossary would invoke conversations about these words and help others learn how they are used in our language. I’m presently looking into the possibility of having Marina adding this to HFW.

Some of you suggested word games. I have found a few that I will look into implementing into HFW. There are many things to consider when adding something like this to an over worked server. Alx found one website called Free Rice. Try it out and tell me what you think. I’m looking into some flash based games that should not interfere with the server and are fun to play. I’ll keep you posed on these developments.

That’s all I have for today. Please contact me if you have any questions or suggestions. You can always just leave a comment below if you so wish.

Captain Jack
LTA

You can contact me here.

Greetings fellow students,

With full approval from our dear teacher, Marina. I would like to announce a new assistant TA Capman911 (aka Mike, and aka Moose and Squirrel). Mike has had been doing a lot of behind the scenes work helping me out with HFW. He has been an outstanding door greeter to new visitors at HTW.

Mike is a retired Captain for the Fayetteville Fire Department. The man to the right of the first photo is his son Michael who is on Eastover Fire department I myself have fought fires in Navy simulators and know a bit about what Mike does. The idea of going into a strange burring building to put out the flames and rescue people and property makes one think how risky that kind of job is. It takes a brave individual to risk his own life to save others. Mike is a modern day hero.

We are still accepting applicants for TAs, so don’t give up. Keep visiting and contributing to HTW. Oh and yes I’m still a TA.

Captain Jack
LTA

Greetings fellow students,

I am Captain Jack. The new lead Teacher’s Assistant for HotForWords. As you may already know Marina spends full time in working on her HotForWords show. She does this all by herself. It’s a big undertaking running the classroom of a million plus students, making new video lessons, answering questions, updating the website, etc. That is what I am here to do; to take on some of the drudgery work for her. In this way she will have more time finish other projects she has been wanting to work on to make the whole HotForWords learning experience better. She has many great ideas to explore that I think you’re going to like.

A little about me. I am a US Coast Guard Licensed Captain and Instructor. Like Marina, I too am a teacher. I teach students on what they need to know to pass the USCG licensing exam, so they can get their license to become ship Captains like me. You can learn more about me at my website: captainjack.ws

I do not have a Philology degree as Marina does. I am not an expert in Philology. I leave all that up to our dear teacher. I do some etymology as a hobby. Mostly I study origins of Nautical words. Those intrigue me the most.

For all you that are applying for a TA position. There is still need for more TAs. So go ahead and let us know you are interested.

Well I have to go to work now. Marina is asking, “Where’s my coffee I asked for?!!”

—-

Jay was the pervious TA and did an AMAZING JOB!  You can find his page here.