In the immortal words of Paul McCartney, "I have to admit it's getting better. Getting better all the time." My life's arc has been in a gradual upward spiral since January. Perhaps you'd like to join me on the way to the top?

My name is Matt. I have a variety of interests. I am a musician, and I play several instruments. I would love to find a reason to play more. I compose my own music, though it is strictly avocational. At some point, I would like to found or join a band of no/minor repute.

I enjoy watching and mocking really terrible movies. I have a Netflix account partially for this purpose, with such high-quality movies as Blood Car and Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (allegedly, instead of the latter, Netflix sends an unrelated movie also titled Death Bed which stars some obscure relative of the Sheen/Estevez thespian syndicate).

I used to play video games frequently, but not so much anymore. I think that having grown up responsibilities has put a damper on my desire to punch Bowser in the neck with Kirby or whatever.

I've consistently been one of the smarter kids in school. Nobody's perfect, and I've made mistakes much like anyone, but I'm always trying to imporove.

I was born on the West Coast, but for as long as I can remember I have lived in Toledo, Ohio, having gone to college in Cleveland. Circumstances brought me to Michigan for a new job. At some point I'd like to go back to school for a Masters degree, or perhaps a second bachelors degree in Mathematics or something.

I graduated from college a few years ago with a degree in Computer Engineering. I languished in mediocrity for a while until I was hired by a national consulting firm. I'm working on a project with the Michigan state government in downtown Lansing. For now, I'm still languishing in mediocrity, but at least with health insurance. I find that working in a position for which I am overqualified is more respectable than my previous job performing the type of work a trained chimpanzee could do.

In a few years, I plan to move to the West Coast, where technology jobs are more plentiful. There are two disparate fields in particular I'd be interested in entering. One is developing video games and the other is designing computational algorithms (actually, less disparate than one might initially assume).

... math, physics, programming. Hard sciences, mostly.
... useless trivia. I am totally planning to go on Jeopardy! in the near future.
... music.
... cleaning up pretty nicely.
... rambling nigh-incoherently, as if I were someone's grandfather.
... pretending I know what I'm doing.
... frugality. I come by it honestly.

You tell me.

Though seriously, I've been told I have a really awesome smile. If I find you sufficiently interesting, you might just get to see it.

A running tally of books, films, music, and cuisines I enjoy is beyond the scope of this text, so when asked this question I often limit it to recent examples of my "likes." I thoroughly enjoyed the Watchmen comic (or "graphic novel," if you prefer) and seeing the movie on opening weekend was well worth the $10. Other movies I recently saw and enjoyed include Get Smart (Steve Carell singlehandedly convinced me to start watching The Office) and Religulous (Bill Maher comes off as surprisingly even-handed. For an ATHEIST. Which we all know are never to be trusted).

Favorite recent books include Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The God Delusion, and A Brief History of Time. There are a good dozen books I bought that I have yet to read. I need more hours in the day.

Musically, my tastes are wide and varied. I can find good in most any piece, but when it comes to listening, I tend toward jazz (preferably big-band or high-energy swing) or classic/alternative rock (with a lively bass line, and quick drums heavy on the up-beat).

Regarding food, there is little I don't enjoy. I try to eat vegetarian a couple times a week, but other than that pretty much anything goes. Near my place one can find three excellent Mexican restaurants within a block of one another, as well as a newly opened sushi place I'd like to try.

Coffee. If I don't have time to brew a pot in the morning, without exception I will stop at a Dunkin' Donuts or Tim Hortons and buy a cup.

Freedom. After two years being desperately underemployed (alternately, desperate and underemployed), becoming fiscally solvent was one of the most liberating moments in my life, like that precious first gulp of air after being held underwater for several minutes.

Music. After an unintentional hiatus, I've recently begun playing music again, and I wonder how I could have stopped in the first place.

Paying my credit card bills in full. You may laugh, but at least I'm not throwing away an extra 10-25 cents on the dollar each month.

Information. Controlling the mail no longer allows you to control information. It has its own highway, after all. I don't know what I would do if online news were blocked at work during my lunch/break times, but it wouldn't be pleasant.

Making obscure references to television/movies, literature, or digital media. Maybe I'm the only one who "gets" it, but I don't care.

... P, NP, and NP-hard complexity classes. Sometimes, if the night is just right, I also think about NP-complete problem sets.

... how I can "get there from here."

... metaphors. Semaphores. Anaphora?

In no particular order:
--Reading.
--Trying to reduce the size of my absurdly large Netflix queue.
--Adding movies to said queue.
--Watching a week's worth of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report online.
--Programming. Google Code Jam has reignited my passion for writing code in my spare time.
--Composing a form rejection letter if I had received any form "job opportunity!" emails in the past week.

With the exception of my brother and my great-aunt/great-uncle, I can only tolerate my family for about an hour at a time.

The fact that I am beginning to understand some of the business jargon used by my superiors at work frightens and confuses me.

I also wonder how I came to hold my social and political mores, as I would characterize myself as very liberal, while my father is the arch-conservative's arch-conservative, and my mother believes that "I got mine, and if you didn't get yours, then tough luck."

... you caught the typo. Bonus points if you laughed at the ironic juxtaposition.

... you're as awesome as I am.