About the Photo

I grew up on a hog farm. One college summer, he and I tore down and rebuilt the building where the sows live while they are gestating. The photo at the top of every page is my father standing on the roof of this building. What you see are the trusses and the first two rows of purlins.

This gestation floor was only one of the things we did that summer. We also replaced a roof on another building, and many other projects involving a lot of concrete. It was the summer I learned to use a blowtorch, hone my truck and trailer driving skills, build concrete forms, cut wood to measure. I also learned that at the end of the day, when you're exhausted and mad because you keep cutting a purlin 1/16" too short, getting pissed off and throwing the purlin is not a wise thing to do. I still have a scar on my right ring-finger where it took two months to get all the splinters out.

Some Rapid-Fire Knowledge Sharing

1. I listen to music constantly.
2. Dark chocolate is The One True Chocolate.
3. My hair grows so fast I need a haircut every 3-4 weeks.
4. I still think Aliens was the worst of the series.
5. My rock-star fantasy consists of playing bass guitar in a hard rock band.
6. I have to mail-order all my clothes because I'm 6'5"
7. When I played high school basketball, I could dunk.
8. I never dunked in a game.
9. My biggest regret is that I never tried to learn to play an instrument while growing up.
10. I still wear my leather jacket from 8th grade because it's that cool. And it still fits. And I'm cheap.
11. dbenne and esigler are the root of all evil and my Apple hardware.
12. My alcohol tolerance is low and my love of wine is great. This, my friends, is a recipe for disaster.
13. I used to write poetry. Lots of it. How much is bad? Most of it.
14. I can program in over ten languages; I can speak only one. I'd trade a few of the former for one more of the latter.
15. I grew up on a hog farm.
16. I think anyone who can play the piano is simply amazing. I'm trying, and believe me, I'm anything but.
17. If I open a roll of LifeSavers, I will eat the entire thing in one sitting.
18. I used to run a BBS out of my room in high school.
19. People actually thought I was cool for doing this.
20. My parents are some of my best friends.
21. Thus far, I have worked at a BBQ restaurant, a slaughterhouse, been a radio news reporter, stocked groceries, done construction, designed websites, researched landmine detection using high-pressure waterjets, written medical software, worked on missile simulations, written code for finite element analysis, and currently write radiation treatment planning and imaging software.
22. O'Fallon, Missouri is my current home.
23. I no longer own a computer with Windows on it.
24. I'm rather ignorant of politics and world events. I would like to change this, but I can't seem to find the time and gumption.
25. Everything is more fun if eaten with chopsticks.
26. When no one is home, I enjoy cranking up the stereo, going about my work, pausing to play various air-instruments and general air-buffoonery.
27. I'm frequently caught doing the same at work (but with headphones).
28. My voice is monotone and I can't carry a tune (even with chopsticks)
29. I truly believe there is humor to be found in nearly everything--most especially ourselves.

Colophon²

The site is powered by Movable Type. All of the templates are of my own creation, however. I make use of mod_rewrite to give me cruft-free urls. I used to use Mark Pilgrim's cruft-free method, but didn't like having to default Apache to serving as text/html. So, I bit the bullet and learned mod_rewrite.

I use the Action Streams to consolidate my feeds from Flikr and delicious.

Contact Info

Click to reveal my email address: d...@...org

Geek Code

Behold, the The Code of the Geeks . To save yourself some time, here's a decoder

 -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS$/L d-(+$) s+++: a- C++ UB+++>$ UL++ P++++ L+(-) E++ W+++ N++ o K?
w++(---) O? M+>++ V-- PS(+) PE()++ Y+(++) PGP t- 5? X+ R- tv- b++>++++ DI++
D+ G e++>+++ h--- r+++ y?
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------