About Me
I don’t have time for all of my hobbies. I play guitar in a band twice a week with three or more of my friends. I used to use a lot of effects but now I just use distortion and a delay. I like the look and feel of my Godin but I miss my american deluxe fat strat which was stolen some years ago. I like to climb mountains and rocks. I tend to have at least one big mountaineering trip every year. This year I’m going to the Alps to climb Mt. Blanc. I’m also a big skier (telemark style). I used to do a lot of Capoeira but I’m taking a break now. I’ll probably go back to that or another martial art soon. I am really into photography, especially of the street variety. I’m trying to get my work published.
Generally speaking, I’m a software developer, but more than that I’m a startup guy. I’m interested in developing new ideas and new products. I think coding for me is a way to express creative ideas. Therefore I enjoy expressive languages where you can stick to ideas (Ruby) and dislike languages that make you care about what the computer wants (C). Computers don’t have feelings, I do. I’ve never worked for a big company unless you count IBM Extreme Blue and that was only for a summer, and it was really like a startup (and I’d recommend it to anyone, it was awesome). I hope to keep it this way. This means you too, Google, no matter how much I know I’m going to love your chef-cooked meals and free laundry.
I love to read and watch movies. I read non fiction faster than fiction, unless it’s really boring, in which case I tend not to read it, even if people say I should. I really like Seth Godin. My tastes in fiction tend to lean toward satire and wordplay. Tom Stoppard, Thomas Pynchon, Robert Anton Wilson, and Tom Robbins top my list. That’s three Toms and a Bob. I used to read quite a bit in Russian which is my native language. I don’t think it gets much better than Bulgakov — Master & Margarita is probably my favorite book. I think satire is the best because it means the author doesn’t take himself too seriously. People who take themselves seriously suck. That’s kind of a garden path sentence, but not really. I like artsy movies but I’m not going to deny myself the pleasure of the occasional Arnie or Segal flick when the moment is right. Hell who am I kidding, there are no wrong moments for that stuff. I thought No Country deserved the oscar, and was possibly the first oscar in this decade that went to a seriously good movie, not a Hollywood crapfest, and I don’t care if you disagree because you’re wrong and I’m right.
I really like music. I think for some people music is optional, or background noise. For me it’s really important. I have eclectic taste in music, for the most part. I listen to a lot of indie stuff right now. If pressed I’d say my favorite bands are probably Tool, Asobi Seksu, Underworld and Krematoriy (a Russian indie band if you can call it that). I used to listen (and still do on occasion) to gangster rap and I’m not ashamed of that. I still think Tupac was one of the greatest artists of his decade. I am really into food. I like eating it and cooking it. I try not to be a snob about it. I’m getting into beer. I hope it doesn’t get into my belly. I try to eat organic. Sometimes I pay twice as much for a product because it has nice packaging. I’m a sucker like that, but I don’t think less of myself for it. I am a big procrastinator, but I when I’m working I can be insanely productive. I am writing this at 1am and I still have a bunch of work to do.
What I do
I am the founder of Planypus, a place to share plans with your friends. I set the general direction for the company as well as leading the development team. I am the senior developer and one of the first employees at CohesiveFT where I am primarily responsible for the web side of the Elastic Server On-Demand product, a virtualization factory that lets you easily produce virtualization ready and cloud ready servers from a component library. I have about 10-13 years experience writing software including leading a successful effort to build an open source quantum computing simulator, working on next generation semantic web technology at IBM’s Extreme Blue program, and building a distributed messaging system for an airline reservations system at G2 Switchworks. I got degrees in computer science and linguistics at UIUC but I was programming even before high school. I’m not sure I want to be a coder all my life, but it’s certainly something I enjoy right now. Especially in Ruby.