Colin

Colin Mannlicher is a white American male born on October 3rd 1985 in Boston, Massachusetts, and lives and works in the New York City for Google as a principal software engineer, for the Maps division. He lives in a 1 bedroom apartment in a "luxury" new build apartment in Fort Greene and generally commutes to the West Side Google office either by train or sometimes by his commuter fixed gear bike (a Specialized Langster) via the Manhattan Bridge. Colin's eyes are a hazel color, and his hair is a light brown, and he's about 6'1" and 180lbs. (185cm and 82kg). His abdomen is taut but not overly muscled, and his hands are usually heavily calloused from rock-climbing.

Colin grew up in the Mansfield Massachusetts and did well enough in school, although he was quite introverted in high school, most of his time spent in IRC, internet forums, and working on programming, a few bad KMFDM CDs littering his collection, some fights in the early years of high school, leading him to get a degree in Comp Sci at Northeastern University.

Colin wasn't great with women growing up, but post graduation and being an early member of OKCupid became a trial by fire for him, going on dates with women who were horrible for him, but he persisted, and evolved along with his career. Colin looked for well educated women who were similarly into their career at first, but most of them didn't just relate to who he was when he was younger, and found their lack of "struggle" a little off putting, leading to the relationship to stall out after a year or so. Now he generally just dates whatever he feels like, as he's gotten much more confident in who he is, but also because living in NYC enables him to impress younger women who might not be as well established in NYC as him, such as 20 somethings in publishing who see a nice building, a well dressed, thin, tall man who seems to have a lot going on for him, but he's rolling through the motions until one catches.

The typical pattern for Colin when he's dating is he finds someone attractive to him in some way, they date, they sleep together, and it proceeds for a few weeks, and then both parties float off, thinking that they have better options. Once in a while something sticks, and Colin has a number of exes where they just don't talk ever at all, despite dating for multiple years. They got their fill, he got his. Sometimes it just is like that. One of Colin's relationships with a girl Meghan, from his early years of "figuring out himself" he still has a little regret for just not exiting the relationship early enough.

Colin generally wears clothing from Saturdays NYC, Norse Projects, Acrteryx, Engineered Garments, a few Outlier pieces for riding to work, being a refuge from styleforums post-closing. He looks down on Reddit's /r/mensfashion (as well as redditors in general) as he finds the people there a bit lacking in the same level of analytical knowledge he has for his own clothes. Occasionally, he'll release a snarky comment if it truly offends him, but usually he just ignores it. Nothing too experimental or impractical, but very studious.

A Specialized Venge road bicycle decorates one of the walls, full electronic Dura Ace componentry, but he rarely rides it outside nice days, his rock-climbing at Brooklyn Boulders more of his priority, as he views rock climbing as problems and solutions with the body, rather than just as something you just do.

Colin is very smart, very well researched, but this has detriments to his empathy. He's not outright cruel or would never insult someone directly. In fact, his peers at work find him extremely kind and patient, which lead to his promotion to principal software engineer.

The thing is that Colin has trouble understanding that the concept of meritocracy doesn't apply to everyone. He made it to Google from middle class parents, and is doing great. He's not so naive at this point to say just learn to code, but he might secretly wonder why someone who got laid off might have just been excess money for a company, and understand why the company laid them off.

Colin considers himself politically as "left wing" these days, after growing up mostly libertarian idealist as a younger man, not knowing really the swell of how politics are when you're younger. The man who used to say "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" has melted away as to how bankrupt that viewpoint really is. He's happy with Mamdani as the Mayor, he dislikes Trump/MAGA, nothing too sanctimonious.

Colin's musical interests these days are more mellowed out from his high school days, preferring Com Truise, Makeup and Vanity, some Japanese Jazz Fusion occasionally when he digs on YouTube or Spotify like Casiopea, things he doesn't have to really think too hard about, but enjoys. Despite his not thinking too much, Colin enjoys purchasing in-ear monitors from places like Drop.com before it closed down, moving towards Hisenior, secretly finding the Anime packaging cute in a secret way.

His favorite films are things like Todd Solondtz and Larry Clark, thinking of himself as more intellectual with film. He dislikes comic book movies and has tolerated a few Pixar/DreamWorks films when he's dated Chinese-born women.

Colin's wondering what's next for him these days. He's trying to settle down, maybe find a longer term girlfriend or wife, but NYC and his relatively stable position at work enables him to be the bachelor party boy, not having to make commitments. Hangovers are taking longer, his friend Mark got married last year, and his parents, Lisa and Rick are wondering if they're ever going to have grandchildren, but he delays their expectations and tries to explain how things are so much different as a millennial.

Colin's apartment is neat, generally spacious, with items from Ikea, slowly getting replaced by items from Hive.com or Design Within Reach. He typically leans more towards deep green colors and a Nord Wave2 stands to one side of his desk space, a little dusty from the only occasional use when he plays around with music production.