I certainly don't feel that I'm defined by my appearance, but a lot of our first impressions are made visually. that's the way it works. So, among other things, I have on this page a few examples of what I look like, or at least what I have looked like in recent times. But I'm going to make you scroll down to see them.I think one of the most important things to know about me, is that I'm inherently a goofy person. It doesn't really comes across on this site as much as it should, but maybe that's because I'm going for this sort of "molto serioso" cool looking design theme. Oh well.
All of these pictures are really out of date now. I'll change them when I get around to it. I occasionally grow facial hair, when I'm too lazy to shave and when I want to conform to the pattern set by my dad and brother. But sometimes I'm totally clean shaven. Like when I'm required to shave for marching band. Then I look vaguely like the middle picture of me with my saxophone, even though it was taken way back in the fall of 1996. The picture on the far left was taken last Januaryish of 1999. The picture on the right was taken in August 1999, just a few months after the premiere of Phantom Menace.
I was born on Friday October 12, 1979. Because of that, Columbus Day has always had a special place in my mind. Even if I would rather celebrate Leif Ericsson day. With my birth I became the fifth member of a family living in Clinton Township, Michigan which was, at the time, a wooded, fairly rural suburb of Detroit. I joined a father James, a mother Geraldine, an older brother Jeff, and a golden retriever Buffalo (aka, Buffy) in a colonial house with a crab apple tree out front, a pear tree, an aspen, and a corkscrew willow in the backyard and a purple leaf plum in the side yard. To read more about my family, try the link below. Of course it won't work yet, so maybe you shouldn't try it.
Thoughts and Errata
I'm six feet tall and pretty thin. I like to play the guitar and try to sing. I think I'm slowly improving at both. I try to be very open minded, a liberal thinker. Sometimes I suspect that people question my reluctance to harshly criticize as perhaps a sign of apathy, but I have strong opinions on the subjects which truly matter to me. Often times I feel there's no need for me to be judgemental of things other people may like when it has no direct relevance to me; why should I rain on their parade when what they do is no skin off my cliche?
My favorite constellation is Orion. Besides being one of the few constellations in which modern people can see what the Greeks were thinking, it has a lot of interesting astronomical features, as well as rising around the same time as my birthday. I just did a big research paper on Proplyds (stars with protoplanetary disks) in the Orion Nebula. You can read it here.
I like Star Wars, Star Trek, high fantasy and science fiction. I'm a big geek/nerd; I don't have a problem with that, and neither should you.I love to read. I need to read. Among my favorite books are:
The Hitchhiker's Trilogy by Douglas Adams (1952-2001).
Anything by Terry Pratchett.
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammet
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Ames.
The Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy by Tad Williams.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.
The Harper Hall of Pern by Anne McCaffery.My Freshman year I resided in B424 Bailey and roomed with my brother. It was a lot of fun. Some of my floormates and I also declared our independence, which you can read about here.
That was my brother's senior year. After that he began graduate work here, doing artificial intelligence research, among other things. Then he decided that grad school was lame, and is now making more money than I probably ever will at EDS.
In 1998-99 I lived in A424 Butterfield and in 1999-2000 I lived in B424 Butterfield (yes, I do like that number). Both years I roomed with my friend Jay Saenz who's all pre-med and perhaps the uber-Star Wars fanatic.
Summer of 2000 I lived with my brother and some friends in The House of Doom. Last school year I was back in the dorms with those of us who remained from Bailey and Butterfield living on the fourth floor of McDonel. Ahh, fourth floors.
If you're curious what kind of classes a student dual majoring in Astrophysics and Theatre might take, you can check out my schedule here. You can visit my final project from my Freshman Honors Chem class here.
Someday the links below will take you to a bit more detailed info about my life and what I do. if you really want to know. I'm still working on it though, so bear with me.
The Elementary Years
The Middle School Years
The High School Years
Choosing a University
Well, I only applied to two Universities; MSU and U-M. The other schools I was considering all required additional standardized tests and, as we all know, standardized tests are evil. I really didn't want to take the SAT II. (Why couldn't AP scores count for the subject tests? Oh, well.)
Anyway, I pretty much went down to the wire in deciding which university to go with (two days before U-M's deadline) and, as you know if you looked at my previous page, I chose MSU. Here's why (in no particular order):1. My aforementioned deep passion for the color green.
2. A much cooler fight song.
3. John Spirit.
4. U-M would have put me into a little box by forcing me to choose a major.
5. U-M screwed up my dual major application, not telling me about my theatre audition date until halfway through the summer (way past their deadline...)
6. MSU has one heck of a superconducting cyclotron.
7. My brother is at MSU.
8. I have friends at MSU.
9. Sparty is cool. And he reminds me of a friend from high school.
.... and last but not least, (In the words of Gavin Craig)
10. A kick-ass scholarship.If this brief bio has left you hungry for more, why not visit some of my friends on the web.
Here's a picture of Pam and me....
