I've been told that profile text is mainly a negative filter rather than a positive one. People go through the text looking for things they don't like.

That being said, it behooves me to curb my normal meticulous and expository nature and try for brevity.

I'm rather unusual. I'm not the non-conformist with the non-conformist badge. I'm the non-conformist who tends to be rather quiet and unassuming about my non-conformity until it slowly dawns on you that somehow this person defies all of your expectations.

Quiet, intelligent, extremely stubborn, libidinous, easy-going, silly, goofy, and good-natured are all adjectives that might accurately describe me. I realize that some of them seem contradictory.

Some people are very fond of the Jack Kerouac quote that starts "The only people for me are the mad ones". And while that's a good quote, and one I can identify with, I'm far more fond of this (sadly much less quoted on profiles) quote by Walt Whitman: "Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)".

I work with computers.

I work at home on Open Source projects that I hope will change how people on the Internet communicate and cooperate. I'm a fan of decentralization. I do not like centralized power or hierarchy in general, and I work to architect the things I create to discourage the formation of hierarchies or blocks of centralized power.

I also really like teaching people things, and making spaces where people of diverse backgrounds can meet and feel safe.

* Almost anything involving computers.
* Listening
* Being understanding and compassionate without being a pushover
* Analysis
* Problem solving
* Teaching people stuff

I don't know, why don't you tell me?

I read a lot.

Books that have changed my opinions or the way I think:

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• The Phantom Tollbooth - Norton Justee and Jules Feiffer
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• Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein
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• The Mind's I - Douglas Hofstadter, Daniel Dennett (Yes, I've read Gödel, Escher, Bach too, but I read The Mind's I first)
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• Octavia Butler's books in general
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• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Robert Heinlein
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• The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand (Yes, Ayn Rand. I do not believe she is a prophet, a bearer of the Truth, but I have read her work. Deal with it.)
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• Starship Troopers - Robert Heinlein
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• The Cassini Division - Ken MacLeod
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• Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carrol - I love the way this book plays with language and perception, and not a single one of the movies have ever done it justice.

I also think I should mentioned a couple of books because I think they say something interesting about me, even though they don't fall into the category above.

I liked the Kushiel's Dart series. The main character, Phedre, is someone who I would like, even though I would find her rather overly dramatic and overwrought much of the time.

I also really liked the Song of Ice and Fire series, and am upset that I started reading it before it was done. Especially now that I learn the author is getting on in years and there's a chance it will never be completed.

Movies I love:

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• Blade Runner
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• The Matrix
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• Waking Life
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• Memento
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• I should see "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind" again.
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• Pan's Labyrinth - A demonstration by counterexample that most of the violence in American movies is essentially pornographic.
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Bands I like:

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• Delerium
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• Dead Can Dance
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• Tori Amos
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• Switchblade Symphony
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• Enigma
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• Mozart *grin*
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Foods I like:
A wide variety of different foods. I like sushi, I like Ethiopian food, I like Thai food. In February 2005, I was at a very nice sushi place in the most touristy part of San Francisco. Cheesy decorations and a silly theme (little boats holding sushi floating around in a little river around the bar), but excellent sushi.

This is a badly worded question as the obvious answers are the necessities of life. There are things I dislike doing without:

* some way of programming something to do something (seriously, many years ago I had a job as a temporary secretary and I starting writing macros for the word processing program)
* the ability to form coherent sentences (When I was in the hospital for a broken arm, I found that I dislike morphine for this reason)
* some forum in which I can engage in discussion or debate (I really love the push and pull of ideas)
* lots of complicated things to think about (which often come from books)
* an authority to despise
* sexuality

Complex systems of all kinds and how they're related to each other. For example, the structure of the food chain (web really) and the structure of the brain have important things in common. Somewhere in all that, I think there is some fundamental law that might even govern all of physics. But, I'm not sure. These principles may even form some guiding principles of ethics, but I'm not sure of that either.

My work, which on good days is a subset of the above.

Dancing, or playing board games, or playing D&D, or at a friend's house at one of those sorts of parties where people wear t-shirts, eat fancy cheese and talk about intellectual stuff.

I'm very cluttered and seemingly disorganized, but oddly I would not describe myself as a slob in any respect.

I'm polyamorous. (This most emphatically does NOT mean that I think in 'primary/secondary' terms).

I really like control in some situations. ;-)

I've never had a driver's license and while I have driven some, I would not say that I know how to drive.

I can be rather distant and seemingly aloof, especially in social situations involving a lot of people. A friend has described me as a 'wizard in a tower'.

* You want an intellectual conversation.
* You like hearing bad and/or obscure puns. :-)
* You want someone to take hiking with you.
* You have your own particular skill of the mind - Analytical is not a requirement. You could be someone who has an amazing intuitive grasp of people and their motivations. You could simply make truly interesting connections between things you wouldn't otherwise relate. You could have an amazing skill for communicating emotion through a physical medium.

I've discovered that like the Tao, the person that is described is not the true person. Who someone is is more than any words you can put down that might describe them. One person can seem totally different to two other people. And it isn't because they're putting on a face or being fake, it's because people are not bound by their descriptions. They literally are interaction and interrelation. So when different components are brought to this mixture, different results are perceived.

This is very much my philosophy of the world in general. So if you're intrigued enough to figure out who we'd be together, and realize that your experience may differ from than you'd imagine after extrapolating from what's written here, try it and see.