After a few wandering years, I now live in Chicago and design database architectures of the future. I am last-picked for football, middle-picked for dodgeball, and first-picked for Trivial Pursuit. People say I am "just serious enough". I like seeing and learning new things, and other people who do too.

I love microtargeted history about geology or fonts, stories with a touch of the supernatural, and movies with a sense of humor. I have piles of books around the apartment in various states of read-ness. I love art that takes me outside myself. I understand every joke on xkcd.

I'm usually hard-headed, rational, and scientific, but I love lyric poetry and romantic stories (in the broadest sense of the word). I like listening to people who can tell me about things I don't know. The closest I've had to a religious experience was watching the vernal equinox at Chichen Itza; the shadow was lame, but the people were incredible.

I know a dozen programming languages and have forgotten a dozen more. Given a ceiling fan, I don't turn on air conditioning until the temperature hits 92. I have perfected the ironic exasperated sigh. I am a typesetting ninja. I notice grammatical errors but let them pass. Apparently, given the preceding summary, I love declarative sentences.

At work, I'm ripping apart crappy old databases, and making them shiny and new. At home also tearing through Infinite Jest, building bookshelves, and scouring the city's Goodwill and Salvation Army stores for an XXL grey suit to make my David Byrne halloween costume. Besides that, there's bars, architecture, music, mismanaging my Netflix queue, learning.

Diving into things and seeing them from the inside out.

I really have no idea about this one. Maybe glasses?

BOOKS:
A History of Western Philosophy, and anything else by Bertrand Russell; everything by Jorge Luis Borges; The Plague, and all else written by Albert Camus; graphic novels: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds, Finder, Lucifer, Blankets, Girl Genius, Wasteland, Scott Pilgrim; anything by Haruki Murakami; Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell; One Hundred Years of Solitude and anything else by Gabriel García Marquez; anything by Daniel Dennett; Hemingway; H.P. Lovecraft; The Cartoon History of the Universe; The Neverending Story; Microserfs and Generation X; The Demon-Haunted World and The Varieties of Scientific Experience by Carl Sagan; The Golden Bough; all of Kurt Vonnegut; The Sandman, American Gods, and anything else by Neil Gaiman; anything by William Faulkner; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Virginia Woolf; Herodotus, Aristophanes, and Ovid; Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov; Alan Moore (From Hell, V for Vendetta); V. and The Crying of Lot 49; Snow Crash and The Baroque Cycle; The Secret History

MUSIC:
Radiohead, Radiohead, Radiohead. Also: Van Morrison, Bach, Explosions in the Sky, The Band, Björk, Cat Power, Sonic Youth, Sigur Rós, Arcade Fire, The Clash, Talking Heads, The New Pornographers, The Flaming Lips, My Bloody Valentine, Mercury Rev, The Gathering Field, R.E.M., Spoon, U2, Wilco, Green Day, Miles Davis, Massive Attack, The Dismemberment Plan, Mono, The National, Deltron, Yoko Kanno, Modest Mouse, Beck, Neko Case, Blackalicious, Dinosaur Jr., The Roots, Pearl Jam, Sufjan Stevens, The Police, Smashing Pumpkins, Stars, MGMT, Andrew Bird, Beth Orton

TV:
Mystery Science Theater, Futurama, Firefly, Cowboy Bebop, Haibane Renmei, RahXephon, Mr. Show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Upright Citizens Brigade, Fullmetal Alchemist, The X-Files, The Middleman

MOVIES:
Once Upon a Time in the West, This is Spinal Tap, Repo Man, Buckaroo Banzai, Dark City, Pan's Labyrinth, The Big Lebowski, Brazil, Ghost in the Shell, Chimes at Midnight, The Lord of the Rings, Primer, The Third Man, Princess Mononoke, Serenity, Hellboy, The Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, The Terminator, Alien and Aliens, the Bourne Trilogy

Even though the instructions don't mention VIDEO GAMES:
Ico, Silent Hill 2, Shadow Hearts Covenant, Braid, Valkyria Chronicles, Odin Sphere, Fallout 1-3, Final Fantasy, Portal, Bioshock, Fatal Frame, Uncharted, Ratchet and Clank, Zelda, Chrono Trigger, Marathon

FOOD:
I can't stand seafood or cauliflower, but anything else is great. Particularly steamed broccoli, mesquite chicken, lasagna, dark chocolate, bell peppers, bruschetta, italian ice, and good pizza.

Because there's not a category for OTHER:
xkcd and You Look Nice Today

I'll defer to Camus (supposedly, though I can't find the source) for this one:

1: Life in the open air, 2: the love of another being, 3: freedom from all ambition, and 4: creation.

Type theory, the history of science, artistic trends in American architecture, lolcats, cache invalidation, and analytic philosophy.

Sometimes, I wonder about the future; when I start to approach the Wanking Horizon, I change the subject.

At a bar with friends.

is that (at the moment) I can't figure out what to admit.

You want to have a meandering, in good way, conversation.