A very good friend of mine told me that my profile was generally pretty good, but that my self summary was boring. Accordingly, I am going to try to spice it up a little.

Originally, I'm from New York City; when you are from New York City, it colors everything you do for the rest of your life. I've lived in lots of other places, though -- near Philadelphia, near DC, in the UK and even in Indiana. I like to travel; I've been to London, Paris, Rome, Barcelona and lots of places I can't really bring to mind right this second. Mountain View -- The Windy City. The Big Apple. The City of Red Roofs. No, wait, that's Chicago, New York and Caracas.

I have just recently moved into the Bay Area. Okay, I've been in the Bay Area for several years. I can't say I'm a recent arrival anymore.

I work in technology. I have a Ph.D. in Computer Science, and I did a post-doc (thus, the stay in Indiana). I enjoy it, but I don't talk about it unless the other person has a pretty strong interest in it. Computer Science puts even the most well-intentioned to sleep... Actually, this is a deliberate strategy. I secretly work for the NSA, and the best way to get people to stop asking about your job is to put them off their guard with long rambling diatribes about memory consistency models for multicore architectures.

I feel strongly about food. I would love to find someone with whom I can eat at a ridiculous quantity of good restaurants. I would love to find someone who can give me feedback on my cooking, because I love to cook, but I never get any good feedback on it. This is because people are generally too nice to say anything objective, especially if they like the food. Well, as a zombie, I find that few people respect my dietary choices. I've tried to be accommodating! I've fed my vegetarian friends GRAINS! I always have a nice selection of CHAMPAGNES! My motto is, "Anything goes when it comes to the food CHAIN"!

Yes, that's a weak adaptation of an oldie but a goodie.

Possibly because of my food obsession, I exercise regularly. I mainly do weight training and various aerobic exercises, but I also enjoy yoga, skiing, and I'm fairly open to anything that generally doesn't involve too much humidity or too many biting insects. Plus, I'm a ninja. I didn't put that in before because, you know, publicity and the ninja don't go really well together. But yup, ninja.

I have been described as an information junkie. I like to read. News; Books; Magazines. I'm not picky about the medium. Movies; Television; anything.

I play the cello. Or, rather, I haven't been able to make serious time for it for a couple of years, but I have been trying to make more time for it recently.

I like to talk a fair amount, especially with someone who is interesting. It's okay, because I also like to listen.Let's see, secret agent, zombie, ninja... Oh, I know! Pirate, too! Yo-Ho, I sail the seven seas, "Arr Jim Lad, ye'll get a lick o' the cat o' nine tails e'er the day is through", the whole thing.

I'm here because someone told me that this was a good way to meet people, regardless of whether you want to date them or not.

I am incorrigible, imperturbable, and sesquipedalian

Oh, a bunch of things. For example, my sinoatrial node is busily sending electrochemical impulses to the rest of my heart to control its beat. In fact, I'm orchestrating electrochemical impulses all over my body, through millions of neurons.

I'm also using my diaphragm muscles to pull air into my lungs; I'll be pulling the oxygen out to enrich my bloodstream (there it goes!). I'm busy using that oxygen to convert glucose into ATP. The glucose is generated by my liver, mostly.

Speaking of my liver, you wouldn't believe how busy it is! In addition to the glucose, it is secreting bile, breaking down toxins, storing vitamins, synthesizing plasma and breaking down red blood cells.

That's all just the tip of the iceberg, I'm afraid. And I have to keep doing this for another 60 or so years. It makes me tired just to think about it. I'm going to go lie down.

I'm 8'11". I have horns growing out of the side of my head. I have glowing green eyes and bat's wings, but I keep them in a jar by the door.

Oh, yeah, and I wear glasses, too.

Is there any way to answer this question without using up the entire page? I generally like anything that is both well crafted and interesting. That applies to all four of the above categories.

Now, there are many people -- scurrilous folk all -- who will claim that I am pretty negative. This is not true at all. It is just that few things are both well crafted and interesting.

That's all probably too broad. My favorite movies are probably Duck Soup and The Godfather, but I like movies by Miyazaki and Jeunet and Hitchcock and Kurosawa; I like anything with crisp, funny writing, and I laugh so easily that it probably isn't worth picking out The Thin Man from the South Park movie; I like high-quality grandiose spectacles, like the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the original Star Wars trilogy; or maybe...

Okay, let's try music. What do Bach, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, U2, Saint-Saens, The Who, Bob Marley, Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck and Simon and Garfunkel have in common? Yeah, I don't know either.

Well, that's not true. They have lots of things in common. But none that answer the real question.

Books? I love to read anything by Shakespeare. The brilliance of Gabriel Garcia Marquez makes me feel proud to be walking around on the same planet, and utterly ashamed that I can't read him in the original. Ditto Neil Gaiman (except I can read him in the original). What can I say? Magical realism works for me (Rushdie and Llosa are also people whose writing makes me want to get around to reading more).

The original Sherlock Holmes stories are a big part of my childhood. Same with Lewis Carroll and Douglas Adams. I'm always happy to read anything by David McCullough, for some reason. On airplanes, I almost always take a pile of books that includes some science fiction; that's how I ended up reading the Foundation Trilogy, Ender's Game, Dimension of Miracles, Ringworld, lots of Terry Pratchett, Neil Stephenson, and others.

I spend a lot of time reading whatever comes to hand. I always seem to be reading a few things at a time. At the moment, I am re-reading Richard III, reading Neil Gaiman's new book Fragile Things, and I am making my way through Nick Tosches's non-biography of Arnold Rothstein. This will change as time progresses, but I probably won't bother to update it. Yep, this is ridiculously out of date.

Foods is a toughie. I like everything; I have yet to come across a cuisine that I broadly dislike. American, New American, French, Northern Italian, Southern Italian, Tuscan, Spanish -- tapas!, Japanese, Szechuan, Cantonese, Thai, Vietnamese, Pan Asian, Asian Fusion, Indian, Ethiopian, and I give up. Baked goods are a particular weakness. When I have the time, I bake bread and cookies and cakes and brownies and pies. Not all at once, because my oven isn't big enough. I have a couple of shelves of cookbooks.

My major hang-up is that the food should use fresh ingredients in good proportion, and the application of heat should be appropriate. This is extremely difficult to find. For some reason, the one exception to all of this is raw tomato, which I can't eat at all, much to my annoyance.

pri�vate adj

Not for public knowledge or disclosure; secret.

Not appropriate for use or display in public; intimate

I don't mean to seem petty, but isn't this kind of a contradictory question?

Apparently, this sounds grumpy. This is because I'm a crotchety old man. Hey, you kids! Get off my lawn!

You are interested in talking with me. I am always interested in talking with new people.

P.S. If you're reading this on Quickmatch, please just look me up by my username, coraces, as I don't use Quickmatch. [1]

[1] This is a slightly modified quotation from amberckerr, who objects to my using it without crediting her.