Describe myself? I once got a letter saying, "Life is never boring with you. I know I can count on you in any number of dangerous situations. You are ever cheerful and one of the most eloquent men I have ever met."

What can I say? The world excites me, and I love being cheerful and intrepid. I believe we get to choose the world in which we want to live, and so I've chosen to live in one that's large and dynamic, filled with strange and seemingly contradictory extremes: there's a good bit of magic in what I do, but also lots of logic; I get too excited about everything to ever sit still, and yet I love to read and think and dream; I look forward to long nights singing and playing laser tag with friends, which nights then give way to calm moments of introspection and focus. All these opposites I enjoy, and the tension between them is what makes life interesting. Above all, I love life and the living of it, and I love many things -- especially my friends and family -- very fiercely.

I'm a traveler, a philosopher, and geek, as much at home in airports, road trips, jungles, and markets, as I am when I'm, well, at home, sitting by a fire with a bit of tea and good book, or trading stories and jokes with everyone around. Words and their meanings mean a great deal to me, and I try to cultivate words like gardener tends his garden. The right word at the right time can fork lightning and crumble mountains, and I aim to find all those right words. And stories! I'm an unabashed storyteller and collector. Stories are my emotional bread and butter; anything can happen to me, and so long as I get a good story out of it, I'm none the worse for wear.

I am heroic, optimistic, and creative.

By day, I'm a boldly-mannered software engineer inventing the future at a company I love. By night, though... By night I don a cape and mask and roam the city looking to put ne'er-do-wells to justice. Or, at least, I would, if spandex were warm enough for this city...

But seriously: outside of work, I'm always in the middle of a bunch of little projects. I'm picking up the guitar again, taking boxing and tango lessons (I know, right? Crazy extremes!), and working on my writing -- little short stories, the occasional joke, a bawdy limerick or two. I like trying new things.

Planning 28 hours of worth stuff for a day and then actually managing to fit it all in, all without a TARDIS or time machine.

Jokes aside, I'm good at Computer Science/programming/problem solving, which is good because it's my job. I also rock at campfire stories -- storytelling in general, really -- and, of course, puns. You've never met a punster like me, I can pretty much guarantee it.

I also possess some skill at beating people in board games (chess, anyone? Scrabble?), though my other board gaming friends would scoff if they heard me say so. They're wrong, though. I'll show 'em on my next turn...

I'm told it's my energy. People say that they know when I walk into a room because the room feels different... more lively, somehow. I'm always bursting with enthusiasm for whatever's at hand.

After that, it's probably my beard or my eyes. My beard is, well, the dominating feature of my face, I suppose. I shave it off from time to time, but I like playing with it too much to keep it off.

Asking me which book is my favorite is somewhat akin to asking me which breath of air is my favorite. But just to give an idea of the books I enjoy reading:
"Dune" by Frank Herbert
"The Lord of the Rings" by J. R. R. Tolkien
"Earth Abides" by George R. Stewart
"One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Anything by Lois McMaster Bujold or Stephen Brust
"All the King's Men" by Robert Penn Warren.

There are so many more it's not even funny, but those will suffice for the moment.

I don't watch as many movies as I read books, but I do have a few favorites:
"Interstate 60"
"Transformers: The Movie" (the animated one, not the crappy 2007 one. Childhood favorite!)
"Star Wars: A New Hope"
"Serenity"
"Pirates of the Caribbean" (arr, matey!)
"The Dark Crystal" (Another childhood favorite.)

I love most music, so long as it has an interesting, driving beat, a guitar, or both. This includes most rock (though modern rock gets a little too edgy sometimes), some pop, some rap, a little country, and a heck of a lot of jazz. A LOT of jazz. Favorites though? How 'bout:

The Mahavishnu Orchestra
Chick Corea
Miles Davis
The Foo Fighters
The Protomen
Yasunori Mitsuda
Swan Lake (Tchaikovsky in general, really)

Food: I'll eat it all. No, seriously. Haggis? Done. Knuckle-and-tendon soup? Delish. Liver? Bring it on. I'll never say no to Indian or Chinese food, though.

Videogames!
I love the old school RPGs from Square's Golden Age.
Chronotrigger (all time favorite game! If you look or act like Marle, let's talk!)
Xenogears
Final Fantasy IV, VI, and IX
Eternal Darkness
Fallout 1 and 2

A good question, best answered briefly and as a poem:

Challenges, literature, stories.
A song in my head,
The banter of friends,
And the eternity of Seas.

Mostly, I think up wordplay and puns. Lots and lots of puns. They just happun sometimes. They're beyond my puntrol. Ok, I'll stop now.

So as not to seem like I've dodged the question, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to invent The Future and why we're still doing things the way we are. Like, boarding airplanes, for example. (I mean, come on! There's gotta be a faster way than the zombie shuffle...). Or why exactly haven't we invented hoverboards or flying cars yet, and how exactly they'd work and would you even want one if they existed? Let's be honest: of course you would.

I think a lot about politics, economics, and society, too, and the Way the World Works. Power gradients, incentives, injustice, trust and mistrust, and the their interplay in society. I'm Egyptian and have been following the Egyptian revolution closely; it's been both uplifting and terrifying by degrees. It's crazy watching history on that scale unfold. Every day is a "We Didn't Start the Fire" moment.

Really though, I'm naturally very curious about the world around me, and I like to play armchair philosopher often, so everything gets me thinking.

More recent Friday nights I've been taking Tango lessons, which are a great challenge and a lot of fun. I'll sometimes miss the classes for a good reason, though -- friends coming into town, a board game night, Karaoke, or random trips to visit people in some other city. On occasion I'll have a quiet night in with a video game or movie, too. It's good to let the batteries recharge.

Well... Two things.

Sometimes, I worry that people read my profile and think, "man, what a cool dude!" and then get freaked out by my religion or even the beard and immediately run -- er... click -- away. So, the most private thing I'm willing to admit on the "Internets" is that I'm a pretty liberal Muslim and the beard is there only because I like it and may vanish on a whim.

That said, the other thing I should say is that, liberal as I am, I am also very sincere in my beliefs and that I'm looking for someone who can respect and appreciate them.

You're looking for someone you've never found before.

But! Because that might be a difficult condition to meet, you should also message me if you're a curious, clever, witty, wordsmithy bibliophile with a nerdy streak, an appreciation for a romanticized Victorian Era (steampunk!), and the ability to delight in everything you experience. But it's also ok if you're not all these things. Really, I'm looking for someone to help me write my story -- literally and figuratively -- and make it "our" story. You should message me if you like to dream and think we could tell a great story together.

Or, more simply, you could message me if you love life. Or if you love Transformers or Pirates. Message me if you have a crazy-eyed, bushy-tailed sense of adventure and you want a road-trip companion who can drive 36 hours straight on one cup of coffee and three rest stops (Think I'm kidding? Ask me about that. Great story). Message me if you want to have such a road trip, or even if you don't but just want to talk about it.

Message me if you want to stay up until dawn talking about politics or music or that crazy thing that happened the other day, or even if you don't want to talk at all and just enjoy the sunrise. Or sunset, for that matter, over a cup of coffee.

Or even just message me if you feel like playing a game of chess or Scrabble, or if you want a backup singer or a sympathetic ear. Or even if, maybe, you think I'm handsome and just want to say hi.