Hello Steem community, and greetings from a traveling cartoonist!
Hello everyone!
My name is Nicholas, and I'm an engineer, a world traveler, a cook, a cryptocurrency & blockchain entrepreneur, and a cartoonist... among many other things. Do all those things together make sense? Well I suppose it doesn't make much sense to ME either, yet somehow here I am. All I can say is, life doesn't always move in a straight line... nor should it.
Engineer
I studied aerospace engineering in college, and spent almost a decade working as an engineer for a couple large aerospace companies. Sounds pretty cool, right? Well, I suppose it CAN be, but it greatly depends WHERE you work and WHAT you work on. Long story short, some of the projects are fascinating but the corporate and/or government environments that often go with this kind of work are just not my cup of tea. Ultimately, the desire to work on my own projects, travel more frequently, and be the master of my own destiny led me away from the corporate grind and to the role of entrepreneur.
World Traveler
I'm an American who was born and raised in Alaska, and because traveling is in my blood the Steem handle "northwestnomad" seemed appropriate. As an avid road-trip enthusiast I've traveled through most of the USA, and I have also had the chance to travel to 12 other countries so far. By the end of this decade I hope to bring that number up to 20. As of this writing I currently split most of my time between Mongolia and the USA. And yes, on occasion I will be posting blog entries and photos from my travels to share with you all!
Ulaanbaatar and the Tuul River, taken from the Zaisan monument.
Cook
While I haven't been cooking in a job capacity since my struggling university days, my time working at pizza restaurants, a couple fast food joints, and even a Chinese restaurant did a lot to open up an interest in the art of cooking. Learning that small handful of techniques and experimenting with my own new creations in those early days has blossomed into one of my favorite hobbies and a valuable life skill. Spending time abroad has only expanded this hobby, as when one goes long enough without a favorite food it's only a matter of time before you want to learn to make it yourself from scratch. So from time to time you can look forward to some recipes and cooking articles to share.
Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Entrepreneur
Before I left to study engineering, I paid the bills as an IT goon. My first job in this area had me thinking, "oh man, there's no way I'm qualified to do this"... only to find out that there were a LOT of IT people out there who had even less of a clue than I did. In the late 90's and early 2000's, it was amazing how far you could get with a decent brain in your head, some basic level of computer knowledge, and the minimum level of social skills required to not constantly embarrass your boss. I never intended to make a career in IT, yet that eclectic, jack-of-all-trades mish-mash of computer knowledge and skills gained from those early jobs (and through my engineering career that followed) has led me down a twisting path to entrepreneurship in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. Like so many in this field I'm still much more the student than the master, but I have picked up a few things that I intend to pass on here.
The first mining rig I assembled, using a cheap computer case and angle aluminum for the frame. After having built many more and now having access to decent server rack cases, I'm almost embarrassed by the way it looks. But I'm sharing it just to show that ALL of us have to start somewhere...
Cartoonist
I've been drawing for as long as I can remember. While most boys had sports stars and the like for their heroes, my childhood heroes were cartoonist icons like Gary Larson, Charles Schultz, Bill Watterson, Berke Breathed, Jim Davis, etc. I've been producing a weekly comic strip since 2017, and the desire to bring this from a hobby to something more is the biggest part of what draws me to Steem. Since many of my comic strips tend to be story-oriented, I will be introducing my webcomics here in chronological order several times a week until caught up to the current strips (though I may introduce the occasional new comic strip ahead of time when it's very appropriate or timely). Having a bit more financial independence will open up the opportunities for me to produce comic strips multiple times a week, and I'm looking forward to the Steem community making that possible!
The main title image for my primary webcomic, "Nerd By Northwest"...
So that's a quick and dirty introduction of who I am, and some of the things you can expect to see from me. I love the concept of Steem and really look forward to being a part of it and watching it grow. Thanks for reading, and keep a lookout for my first comic strip to be posted very soon!
UPDATE 11/3/2018: The Nerd By Northwest comic is now live on Steem! Click below and enjoy!
Hey @northwestnomad welcome
Thanks! Hope you will enjoy my content :)
Hello @northwestnomad, success for you here in steemit.
Thanks! You as well!
Hi @northwestnomad. It's nice to see you here!
Thanks @preferanist! Assuming you might be interested, I've just posted the first strip of my Nerd By Northwest webcomic series. You can find it under the webcomic tag. Cheers!
Hi there, northwestnomad, you're welcome. Wish you all the best.
Thanks, good luck to you too!
Welcome to Steemit! You have taken the first step in achieving many goals here at the crossroads of cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and social media. Consistent engagement is needed to progress and grow your following and influence. I am currently working on a weekly post to curate new users and providing them an introduction to the ecosystem. I have selected your post as one I will feature in an upcoming post! I explain this initiative on one of my previous post.
There are a number of great content creators on the platform to help you on your journey. I have recently ran into a great post by @roleerob that is great to get off to a great start here on the ecosystem. As I continue to expand this initiative, I continue to find great content and guides for new users such as this post from @finnian who not only includes a great step-by-step process of registering for #Steemit but also provides great security and engagement tips as well to help you on your journey. Another great user creating content for new Steemians is @paulag who is creating community backed video series on learning to navigate STEEM.
Keep your eyes out for these tips and references to help you on your journey to becoming a minnow! It is also a great idea to follow some of the great projects being built on the #STEEM blockchain. You can see these projects here. Some of these projects provide you the ability to interact and engage within the community and have the potential to provide rewards for your engagement. For example, @actifit is a fitness app that tracks your daily activity which you can post to the blockchain and earn rewards for your participation. Another interesting project is @steemmonsters which is a digital trading card game that enables you to collect and battle with the community all within the #STEEM ecosystem.
Lastly, a new initiative has just been launched by one of our top witnesses @gtg to support new users that become very active and need additional bandwidth to remain actively engaged in an effort to build enough Steem Power to grow your influence and interaction in the ecosystem. I would highly encourage you to visit his post for further instructions. I wish you the best in your future endeavors!
Welcome to Steem @northwestnomad.
Do read A thumb rule for steemit minnows - 50:100:200:25 for starter tips.
Spend time reading Steem Blue Paper to know how Steem blockchain works and if you still have any queries ask them on our Ask me anything about Steemit post and we will try to answer that.
All the Best!!!
Welcome northwestnomad!
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welcome northwestnomad ! aerospace pay well =) to have accumulate surplus for other activities of your interest. how come you have to travel between mongolia and usa, thought ya asian when looking through ya profile.
hmm
so what kind of entrepreneurship are you on ?
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Thanks!
In regards to your first comment, yes the aerospace field pays engineers pretty well, and that (along with prudent saving) was helpful in allowing me to strike out on my own. The money was hard to give up, but I find I appreciate having the extra time a lot more than I miss the money.
As for your other questions, I'm spending time here in Mongolia to 1) explore business opportunities, 2) cost of living is cheaper, and 3) because of my desire to experience new places. My cryptocurrency business endeavors here thus far are primarily in crypto mining, though I am starting to explore the opportunities in cryptocurrency trading as well as educating myself on the ins and outs of smart contracts. I see you've got some posts with technical analysis on bitcoin... I look forward to reading more of that in the future :)
Cheers!
haha probably along with some nice share bonus if you in BA @_@ now you can let the accumulated pot of gold work for you and have the time to do the things you like
Oh thought you have a wife in mongolia thus there. So you have a mining farm in mongolia with the cold weather ? Remind me of the open ended contract with genesis mining arghh vaporise. Wanted to get a antminer rig but electricity cost in singapore is ex to make it profitable.
Yeah documenting my thought on the market via steemit and help me make decision on the trades. Awesome we have common interest to chat abt, look forward to future discussion. =)
Mining was/is just a convenient way to get started in the crypto space, and Mongolia is not a bad place to do it cost-wise. Though I admit even here it's not very profitable for GPU mining at these current low prices. But I have a long time horizon and am willing to sit on my mining rewards for a while.... Or maybe do a little trading with them as opportunities seem to show themselves :)
yeah gonna tide thru this low period. On long term they will just work out fine for those with holding strength =) haha what's opportunities did you discover
Most of the opportunities have been just taking a portion of my mining rewards and diversifying into other more speculative but promising cryptos (like Ark) when their values have significant drops in comparison to what I'm mining. So basically I'm just looking at altcoins I'm interested in, and waiting for the relative dips as key points to diversify my holdings. With as much volatility as the space has, brief, sharp drops and spikes are pretty common aren't they ;)
yeah especially penny crypto they can be really volatile. i was looking at ARK a 1 to 2 wks ago, waiting for entry after the spike but it didnt happen within my timeframe and move on. Looks like it's dipping again now testing on 1160 support. wait for entry again if the stars align =)
Welcome to steemit @northwestnomad.
Follow me @tuanis for random votes daily please checkout the report
Welcome the new steemians. Have a great day!
A very warm welcome to the #Steem blockchain @northwestnomad, it sounds like you'll have a lot of different subjects to post about and life experiences to share with us.
<3 Beautiful #introduceyourself post.
Thanks! Hopefully people will find it of value :)