In progress.

After growing up in Georgia, studying statistics at Stanford, confounding an optical semiconductor startup, coaching a kids' swim team, working for a hedge fund and a startup that wrote software to treat Dyslexia, and spending seven years writing software and designing data-driven products at an internet company that grew from thirty to three thousand employees, I'm enjoying the next phase of my life: running a small commercial vineyard and a large hobby orchard/garden on twenty acres near Forestville in Sonoma County.

I'm also work two days a week, consulting on internet product management and statistics/machine learning, since farming is expensive.

While I'm fairly sure that happiness comes from within (as opposed to from "doing what makes you happy"), there are a few other things I'm pretty sure I want to do more of:
-- offshore sailing
-- backpacking, hiking, and camping
-- traveling and exploring

Currently, research, finding stuff on the internet, building data-driven products, running downhill, skiing uphill.

Ask me again in five to ten years.

Ulysses is the most amazing book I've ever read. I wish I could write like that--an utterly amazing book.

Otherwise, I read a lot of nonfiction. I love the SF public library. It's an amazing resource--like a free version of Amazon.com. They have audiobooks now too--I drive a lot more than I'd like (farm life), and it definitely helps.

For music, I usually use Pandora.com (especially when I was at work)--the genre/artist really depends on my mood, but the quality of the lyrics really matter (I love words in general--I prefer to watch movies with the subtitles/closed captions on).

I never met a culture whose soups I didn't like. Also I love sandwiches, macaroni and cheese, and Indian food. I cook mostly vegetarian at home. Things taste better when cooked in a dutch oven in the coals of a campfire. Tea. Coffee. Beer. Wine.

The internet: The internet has radically changed our world for the better--access to incredible amounts of information makes us all smarter and more efficient. I think the internet makes the world fairer and more equitable too, and that's important to me.

Plants: we couldn't live without them, and our relationships with them are vastly undervalued in our modern world where our food comes from a grocery store or a restaurant, and we see them as a green backdrop for our lives. Working with them (along with open spaces) is why I wanted to farm.

Water: Swimming, sailing, hot tubbing, hot springing, floating, kayaking, scuba diving--all awesome. Snowboarding and glacier-climbing too.

Open spaces: Hiking, backpacking, trail running, and exploring are great. The night sky, viewed from a sleeping bag dug into the snow.

Skepticism and relativism: I usually can see--and argue--both sides of any argument. Nuances are important.

Other people: When you get down to it, it's amazing our society works as well as it does. Millions of people working in concert. Thank you very much for playing your role in it.

Sustainability and tikkun olam (world repair).

Systems, epigenetics, evo-devo. Institutions and cultures. Aligning incentives and structures. How learning works.

Vineyard, orchard, and home design. Cover crops. Irrigation. Dryfarming. Frost. No-till agriculture. Permaculture and agroforestry. Gophers. Southdown Babydoll Sheep. Barn owls. Bats.

Wood-burning ovens, outdoor showers, greenhouses.

What it means to live a good life.

Taking care of my kids.

Just kidding.

Having dinner with friends OR
Cleaning up the homemade kimchi which exploded over the 40,000 ladybugs which were stored in my refrigerator (that's farm life--they're no longer there; the ladybugs are feasting on pea and black bean aphids, and the kimchi is composting) OR
nervously watching the temperature (frost season sucks)

I have joint custody of a cat and a dog. The cat is a former grand champion (regional winner!) and the dog came from the Atlanta Humane Society. There's an uneasy peace between them despite the differences in weight (10x) and temperament. I also have about half a million honeybees.

And the kimchi/ladybug/refrigerator thing.

You want to. My working theory is that it's often better to regret doing something than to regret not doing it--it's a better narrative, if nothing else, and you're more likely to learn something. We'll see how that works out, though.

I'm looking for a partner.