Um, hi. Yeah, maybe I'll fill this out later.

OK, I'm supposed to write some more... I like computers, watching movies, reading, music. Basically keeping myself entertained. I love to learn new things.

Um, right. Who doesn't like these things? OK, I'll add some more here.

I'm very smart. I like smart people. I like people that think about things that other people don't think about. I have a hard time talking to most people. I find I have very little in common with most people. I like puzzles of all kinds. I buy puzzle books sometimes. I started doing crossword puzzles in something like fourth grade. For awhile I did logic problems. Now I generally find them boring. I like to do number puzzles (sudoku, kakuro, etc.) sometimes. I especially like cryptic crosswords. It's a combination of a crossword puzzle and a word game, basically.

I like xkcd.

I like my kids. The one thing I want for them, more than anything else, is to be able to think for themselves. We'll see how that goes. I think my older daughter will get there. She's very smart too. :) She can multiply any number up to three digits long by 11 in her head. It's really pretty simple, we think, but for some reason most other people don't think so. But she loves Hannah Montana, like so many other little girls. She's still somewhat normal, I guess.

I came from a heavily religious background (fundamentalist Christian, I suppose you could say). It took me too long to figure out that that was not for me. I am now areligious.

I think words mean something. I like to be as unambiguous as possible, in writing and in speech. I'm big on effective communication. It's hard for me to tell how well I do at it in speech, since I don't record my conversations and can't very well examine them later. But I think I do ok in writing.

OK, I think I just completely outed myself as some kind of freak. :)

I am skeptical, inquisitive, and reserved

I'm not sure.

Actually I sort of know now. At least I know what I'm doing right now, not necessarily what I want to do. So I do data analysis and various bits and pieces of programming to facilitate my analysis.

What I do is essentially reverse engineering the structure / processing of complex systems based on the output data. Or that's a large part of it, and a part that I very much enjoy.

Pretty much everything. Or nothing. Depends on how you look at it.

My eyes? My distant personality? I don't know.

"Favorite" is so quaint.

When I first filled this out, I had only the above. Then I decided to add a bunch of stuff. Now I'm taking it back. See, I refuse to be defined by things like my favorite books, movies, music, and food. It's really silly. It's nice to know whether someone likes to read (and I do), and what kind of movies (I like movies that make me think, mostly), music (I like whatever I like) and food (whatever) they like, but too much information here is probably detrimental. People in general are more likely to notice bad than good, things they don't like than things they like. Someone going through a list of bands might see ten bands they like a lot, but one they really dislike (probably for some personal reason due to association with something, a bad memory, maybe, or a prejudice (in the sense of what the word actually means, not the connotation it has these days), or whatever) and judge the list based on the one they don't like. It's just human nature. It's the same dynamic as is evidenced by people being much more likely to complain about bad service than extend a compliment for good service. It just is.

But, I suppose if I'm actually interested in meeting anyone, it wouldn't be someone that would judge another based on something like that. Eh. Now I'm half tempted to just delete this whole thing, since it seems so redundant. But I won't. I hope you're good and bored now.

I think I will update this now and then with what I'm currently listening to (and by currently listening to, I mean something that's been a theme in my listening habits lately, I don't mean some song that just happens to be playing as I write this). So right now that would be E.S. Posthumus. I sometimes use Pandora to try to find new music. I think I've had as much success just scanning through Usenet looking for interesting names as any other method. But anyway, I found E.S. Posthumus by starting with Rob Dougan (Nothing At All is an incredible song, btw) on Pandora. I think it's the only music I've found from there that works for me. I found I Monster, Implant, and the Birthday Massacre on Usenet just because their names sounded interesting.

Now I'm really rambling.

Food for my brain. That is all.

Anything and everything.

Lately, politics (and not just because of the elections and all, by lately I mean the last couple of years).

Like... how the system in the US kinda sucks. We have two parties that basically agree on a lot of things. Maybe they agree on 90%, and disagree on 10%, and that 10% is what everyone talks about (because most people don't think for themselves very well, and I sometimes wonder how much most people think at all...), when there's a lot of stuff in the 90% that they agree on that should be open to discussion. But the 90% is not an issue because they don't make it one, because since they agree on it it won't affect the outcome of an election, because the media knows this and doesn't ask questions outside of the 10%, or because the media doesn't even think about these things either, since they're just people like everyone else, and most people don't think about these things.

I like to talk about stuff in the 90%. The 10% is so banal. If you've thought about the 90%, about what might be different that no one talks about, we would probably have intriguing conversations, regardless of whether we agree on what might / could / should be different. At least we're thinking, right?

People say I overthink things, but they're wrong.

Oh, and I never use spellcheck.

And I'm very sensitive. In a good way, though. But you'll never be confronted with it nor even probably know about it unless you want to. It's not who I am, just one aspect of my personality that I generally just keep for myself.

My ramblings strike some kind of chord with you, and you think we might actually be able to talk.