THE PLAYERS
These are the real players behind the High Programmer characters who are writing entries for the Toothpaste Disaster report.
PLAYERS: When you're approved to join the game, put your real-world biographical notice here, formatted as shown below, alphabetized by your last name. Don't forget to add your character's bio to HighProgrammerBiographies.
Paul Baldowski (Costin-U-MOR-8)
Forever frustrated from engaging in frivolous and inane activities through a string of desk jobs and customer service roles, PaulBaldowski has made the most of every session of PARANOIA he has ever run, to offload some of the baggage acquired through daily gray conformity. Day-to-day office life has rarely offered him the opportunity to make oddly-colored, Vat-grown desserts, consistently refuse every request for additional information, and have workmates sit around the office wearing Computer-Approved experimental rad-resistant bin bags.
Ben Engelsberg (Mesh-U-GNA-1)
Ben Engelsberg lives in Tucson, Arizona. He has played Paranoia for over 20 years. He currently works as a manager for a software company, where his routine interactions with The Computer and it's users and programmers have given him constant reminders of the unusually predictive nature of the game. He also believes that Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues is one of the funniest things ever written. Therapy has not helped.
Andy "Jazzer" Fitzpatrick (Make-U-CRY-2)
Andy Fitzpatrick one day decided to see if there was somewhere to play Paranoia online. Appalled that there wasnt somewhere to meet with fellow Troubleshooters and hunt down Commies in the name of The Computer, he created Paranoia-Live.net. The rest is a history of treason, bloodshed, and FUN, FUN, FUN!
Jeff Groves (Drake-U-LAH-1)
Jeff Groves was recovering from an RPG obsession when he discovered Paranoia, destroying years of progress. Under the alias of Mike Lemmer, he spent many nights tweaking his own edition of Paranoia before yielding to the perfection of 2nd Edition. He now wastes his time heckling the new developers, proving that there is justice in the universe.
Greg Ingber (Circ-U-LAT-23)
Greg Ingber is a radio broadcaster, writer, and producer currently based in Virginia, USA. He writes for Circling the Square, a parody conspiracy news site: http://www.circling.org.
Paul Jacobs (Toothy-U-NIX-4)
Paul Jacobs is a real-world High Programmer residing in the Los Angeles sector. He enjoys a history of board, card, and RPG gaming as well as the creation (and destruction) of bizzare paradoxical dream-worlds where up is down and down is down as well. His imaginary free time is unevenly divided between creative input, creative output, and everything else. His mutant abilities vary between Machine Empathy, Machine Apathy, and Machine Antipathy.
Dan Curtis Johnson (Knok-U-OUT-5 through 7,9)
DanCurtisJohnson tests software for Apple Computer and occasionally writes comic books. He has run Me and My Shadow Mark IV six times. His fiancee laughs whenever he says the word "wiki". He has three tooth implants on titanium posts and doesn't floss as often as he should.
Scott Johnson (Ken-U-RON-6)
Jack of many trades and master of none, Scott Johnson has studied science, mathematics, programming, Japanese, writing, RPG design, history and politics, but done nothing useful with any of them. He aspires to someday stop being so indecisive, or perhaps not.
Mark Kinney (Paul-U-LEG-5)
Mark Kinney is wasted at his usual job of grocery clerk, and has probably done more gaming in the last five years than he has since before college. He is a voracious reader on numerous subjects, and thus hates making interest lists.
Karl Low (Watt-U-GOT-9)
Karl Low is a 32 year old Canadian with an unhealthy attraction to designing information and game systems. His wife and two cats grudgingly put up with this, on the grounds that it least keeps him out of their way. He also writes a regular column for the Athabasca University student newspaper lambasting the Canadian government for their treatment of post-secondary education. The cats put up with this as well.
Rob MacDougall (Don-U-DON-11)
You may remember RobMacDougall from his posts at The 20 x 20 Room, his geeky LiveJournal, or his sensational work on the history of the nineteenth-century telephone. He should really be finishing his PhD dissertation instead of wasting time here. His claim that hes researching the social construction of communication networks will only hold water for so long.
Topi Makkonen (Enkid-U-RUK-4)
When not playtesting PARANOIA XP or slaving away translating comics into an obscure language, Topi Makkonen can be found relaxing with his favorite brand of Bouncy Bubble Beverage, pontificating on obscure RPG theory tracts.
Eric Minton (Jan-U-ARY-31)
EricMinton participated in one of the very first Paranoia demos at Origins '84. There was only one character left when he and his brother arrived, so they wound up playing a two-headed unregistered mutant. Strangely, no one noticed the extra head, though it scarcely mattered since the Troubleshooter team lost half their clones before the briefing, and the rest didn't make it through R&D. Anyway, he's loved the game ever since. He works for a web design company in New York where, if the decor is to be believed, everyone seems to have Ultraviolet clearance.
Josh Moretto (Servs-U-RIT-7)
JoshMoretto is a 25-year-old college graduate searching for (and failing to find) a place in the Bush economy. Having spent college proving he could read (English degree), he now struggles to turn this into some means by which he can feed, clothe, and shelter himself. Naturally, he has decided to write things for free on the grounds that it's at least good practice.
R. Eric Reuss [aka "Eric the Darker"] (Err-U-DYT-9)
Over the course of the 1990s, Eric's PARANOIA games metamorphosed from fairly straight table-top RPGing into strangely intense most-of-a-weekend affairs involving decorations, lighting, props, bad techno music, a team of three gamemasters, and about as close to actual Alpha Complex food & drink as is probably safe. While he has not -- alas -- run one of these ParanoiaFests in several years, the scars from such things don't fade quickly.
Eric lives in the vague vicinity of Boston, MA, and has way too many hobbies to list in a short bio. He enjoys playing, running, and designing all sorts of games, and has notional aspirations towards getting some of them published someday. If you ask him nicely, he may share some of his recipes & tips for making Alpha Complex foodstuffs.
Robert Rodger (Dursch-U-WTZ-8)
Robert Rodger is a storyteller and performer living in Boston, Massachusetts making his living doing neither of those things. He has been playing role-playing games since before he can remember (literally) and is a co-founder of Arrogant Game Design.
David Siegel (Cee-U-LTR-5)
David Siegel is currently a law student. What little free time he has is taken up by gaming, either electronic or traditional.
Jared A. Sorensen (Brush-U-TTH-33)
Jared A. Sorensen is a game designer who doesn't know when to shut up. He bought the second edition of PARANOIA in the same town where Penn Gillette was born and raised. Coincidence?
John Spann (Screwz-U-BAD-3)
John Spann is one of the lucky people with time and resources to archive all the material for a game he got from a bookstore for free. The Computer was his friend, and so it didn't list the 2nd Edition book in its systems -- because it wanted him to have this game, you see. So he went out and got all of it. Then he lost all of it. Determined, he now has everything again. This sick individual has run a mostly rule free Live Action version of Paranoia at an LA Con. The things with the twinkies... ah, the memories. Someone once asked him to stop running the game, "The Twinkidelphia Experiments". The next Con, all he was asked was when next it was being run. 
Paul Tevis (Kill-U-DED-4)
PaulTevis is an expatriate Midwesterner living in California. He divides his copious free time between gaming, triathlons, and serving the whims of his two feline masters.
Matt Venzke (Omega-U-MAN-5 to 1337)
MattVenzke is a mathematician and computer security buff. He has always enjoyed RPGs, and his mathematical appreciation for Lie groups makes him a natural at both PARANOIA and incomprehensible puns.