Mad Scientist. Correction: well-paid mad scientist.

I do all sorts of stupid things, like write free software, cook crazy spicy food, and invent useful things for a living. The "too smart" means that I often am too smart for my own good; Wile E. Coyote and Bugs Bunny are my patron saints. I used to think that I would never fall for the "poke loose a big rock while standing directly underneath it", but I did get dinged just *last week* right between the eyes with a 9/16" socket wrench by being almost that stupid. My intern laughed till she saw the blood. Just a flesh wound, mind you, but this is my life.

I love to know how things work, and love to build things in my spare time, too. You might have seen me on television building things out of junk.

A co-worker once said "You would be the first person I'd pick to be with after a nuclear holocaust".

I'm not limited to mechanical stuff; I've done hacky-bad things to electronics, optics, and chemistry as well. None of them have managed to get back at me yet. :) Except for a bit of zymurgy in my younger days, I've tried to stay clear of biology hacking.

I'm married to a beautiful and polyamorous wife and have children. Yes, you can look up polyamory in Wikipedia. :-) And yes, you can (and should) meet her if things become interesting, and definitely _will_ meet her before they become _too_ interesting, if you get my drift.

Oh, and the part on the "survey details" that says "owns cats"? That should really be "owned by cats". At least the cats think so.

Editors

• Kotodateru

Raising a son, chasing the ghosts in mirrors, burping fuel cells, building artificial intelligence systems, helping run conventions (Arisia for science fiction, the Boston Fetish Fair for bondage and bdsm in general, etc). I do a lot of pro bono work, sometimes as an expert and sometimes as grunt labor; it keeps my brain loosened up.

I'm a bizarre but good cook. I can make sushi, vindaloo, fajitas, and have mastered the art of double chocolate fruity marshmallow rocky road ice cream. My orange creamsicle is second only to my (probably implanted) memories of childhood. You want pot roast, look elsewhere; I'll turn that hunk o' beef into spicy stew or a killer chili or possibly "cage kebab".

I use the good tequila when I make the margaritas. Through time, good teachers, and rough experience, I have learned that if you're gonna drink, at least drink the good stuff; I prefer Smithwick's to Guinness (a bartender in Dublin taught me that), ale to wine, scotch to cognac, and Listerine to annoying people.

Editors

• Kotodateru

I'm excellent at inventing new things and breaking old things and fixing things, where "things" include non-tangibles. I'm good at doing a rough plans and estimates in my head. I've got a strong streak of McGuyver in me.

Sometimes what I make is not technical, just "pretty', like a wildflower garden. There is beauty in randomness as well; I think there is a specific word in Japanese for this but I can't remember it right now. Maybe it's "wa" but written differently than the usual "-wa" suffix that indicates "this is the subject of the sentence".

Oh, and I can do pretty good metalwork... including welding. I taught myself how to TIG weld aluminium a few years ago, and made a special air plenum for my truck, to go from the snorkel to the filter airbox. The welds were a bit blobby so I made another, because I knew I could make it prettier. Alas, the second one was prettier, but I mistakenly made it as a _mirror image_ of what it should have been, so all the pretty welds would be facing down where nobody would ever see them. C'est la vie.

My lack of dress sense. :)

Books: the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Tufte books, Most hardcore SF will get me going. World War Z was unexpectedly good; I'd love to make that into a movie, but like Watchmen I fear it will never happen in reality (UPDATE: "I have seen it. And I _LIKE_ it.) . I run more towards Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke in classic SF rather than Vonnegut and Bradbury; Hal Clement was a great guy in person too (long may Harry Stubbs live on in our memory!).

Right now I'm reading "How to See Yourself As You Really Are" by the Dalai Lama (it's a "Buddhism for white guys" kind of book). It's interesting to see where we disagree. Also, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a lot of fun. Yes, I get derailed occasionally.

As for music, it's "heavy" all the way. To me, the three B's are Beethoven, Brahms, and Blue Oyster Cult. Bach and Beatles, not so much, sort of a cheery fluff, they don't hit my core. The Dresden Dolls and The Offspring work too. Musically the Blue Man Group is not quite there, but when you add in their stage show it is. Scary item: one of my interns introduced me to Killswitch Engage and after a couple of hours, I started to _like_ it. For this, he'll burn in hell, but he's OK with that.

For dinner, make mine hot and spicy, but my mouth is often bigger than the rest of my gut. ( :-( )

I'm always up for a good SF vampire or anime movie; I'm not sure if Dr. Strangelove, Akira (the anime) or Blade Runner is my favorite movie of all time. Some of the better anime like NOIR, Hellsing or MADLAX floats my boat. Lucy, Daughter of the Devil is so good that I'm shocked, _shocked_!

I really prefer movies where characters don't do stupid things all the time. I mean, how many redshirts does it take to make a movie fun? Foreshadowing is one thing; character development is necessary, but stupid cuts right to the believability bone.

I guess this is why both Battlestar Galactica and Heroes are so enjoyable to me; the characters are both intelligent and true to themselves.... or at least were, up until the current season. Bleah... why does every series have to turn into a "24" flip-flop f***fest? Story arcs should move forward, not oscillate around some central value forever.

28 days / 28 weeks were both great this way - smart characters. This doesn't mean a comic-book romp isn't fun too; Sin City and 300 were good too. Sometimes over the top is right on target.

Editors

• Kotodateru

Up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom.

You get one point for getting the reference, one hundred points for explaining what it means predictively, and a Nobel Prize for _exactly why_ the universe is _exactly_ _that_ _way_.

Oh- and the "you have been marooned on a desert island and can have three books" question? I pick:

"Survival, Evasion, and Recovery" (US Marines survival manual, FM-21-76-1), "One Hand for Yourself One for the Ship: The Essentials of Single Handed Sailing" by Tristan Jones, and finally "Celestial Navigation for the Complete Idiot" by Gene Grossman (the book version, not the DVD. The DVD would be silly.)

As you might guess from the above, I am not the complacent type. I scratch where it itches, burp quietly but without shame, and would rather build a geothermal-powered Stirling-cycle generating station than curse the darkness. Is this socially unacceptable and politically incorrect? Probably. But my DNA is weak in the "sheep" department.

What to do if zombies attacked. :-)

That, and how my life has turned out. If I wrote a biography of it, and you couldn't search the web to see if any of it was true, you'd say it is freakin' impossible. Somewhere Shakespeare wrote something like

"If this were to be put upon the stage, it would be dismissed as bad fiction."

The complete _unlikeliness_ of things is one reason why Buddhism is probably the closest I come to any religion; only if you have infinite time can all of the extremely unlikely things happen.

On the other hand, I tried being vegetarian for four years. My body told me in no uncertain terms that this was _not_ acceptable and I would not be alive in the fifth year if I did not start eating red, _red_ meat again soon. So, I'm not really a very good Buddhist in that sense.

I love critters; pets, wild things, all that. It's amazing how a well-treated critter (dog, cat, whatever) will "family up" to a human. (or maybe it's "be a pack"; I'm still confused about animal behavior theory.) At least, it amuses me to see how well humans and critters can integrate their lives together. Maybe that bodes well for humanity; very few (any??) other critters can form heterospecies packs. It may be that this ability is what makes humans... humans. And- if we ever figure out an interstellar drive, it may be, as Heinlein puts it: "It may be the strength that wins for us the galaxy." (although Heinlein was talking about something else entirely).

For some reason, I'm really bad at learning languages, so now
I'm trying to learn Japanese. Nothing like taking a daunting task and making it even harder, eh? No, I am actually *not* the stubborn one in the family.

And, of course, I spend a lot of time thinking about what to teach my little ones, and then doing it with them. Who knew that going to the dump to watch the brush shredder or making waffles could be so utterly, utterly fascinating?

Editors

• Kotodateru

Friday night is double Kung Fu night. First an hour of warmups and basic forms, then an hour of something advanced, like longstaff. Then it's to the showers, maybe soak in the hottub, and then see what my MythTV box managed to capture that looks interesting. At a minimum, it's Robot Chicken night. Or fall over in pain. Ibuprofen is my best buddy.

Why do this? Because it clears the mind, for the flexibility and the agility. I still can't block a kick worth crap; I have no illusions of being able to "take" someone. I'm just trying to stay in some shape. And it *is* kinda cool to be able to move a whole lot better than a guy with this much gray hair _should_ be able to move.

The red and black stripes I dye into my ponytail have a deep symbolic meaning.

I'm an anti-theist, yet I have to admit there is one strong argument for a deity: The Observable Existence Of Coffee.

Allow me to explain. If there were no god, coffee would taste as incredibly good as it smells. But in reality, coffee smells great but tastes awful. Inference: there is a god, and that god is the Trickster god, Coyote. Second inference: "Uh-oh." At least if it were Cthulhu or Yog-sothoth, we'd know where we stood, even if it was "in the frozen food section, next to the microwave burritos". With the Trickster, you never really know.

NOTE: my birth date as listed is not correct (consider it a libation to the net-privacy gods). However, it is true that am actually 50+ years old. So there.

Some reasons to send me a message:

0) You knew what "polyamory" meant without having to look it up in Wikipedia.

1) Phased plasma rifle in a forty watt ra.... er... let me try again.

1) If you have access to an IR spectrometer that can operate in the 1 to 30 micron band and can spare a few hours time on it, please let me know!!! I have a bet that needs to be settled, and I'll buy (or cook!) you a really nice dinner!

2) If you figure out who the "nickname" Alex_deLar represents.

3) ***answered*** - it was bad alternator bearings! Whodathunkit?

4) Make up something plausible. Send it. Worse that can happen is I don't respond but that's no skin off your nose. You don't need to try and impress me with intelligence; if you've got intelligence, it will shine through. Otherwise, you'll just strain yourself.