User Profile

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Where I Come From -or-
Tom Sawyer

There’s not much to say about how I look. I’m 6’2" tall, with hazel eyes, straight, nondescript medium brown hair (length varies), and a short, crinkly van dyke with threads of blonde and red running through it. I have a stocky build, and that’s all to which I’m admitting. I’m descended from French Canadians, Scotch, Irish, English, and Native American (Blackfoot) strains, which means I look like the typical white, U.S. Mid-western, mongrel. I wear a gold and opal ring on my right hand and a vintage 1978, stainless steel, digital watch on my left wrist. Most of the time, I wear sneakers, jeans, and oxford shirts, with the top two buttons open and sleeves rolled up past the elbow when it gets warm. Occasionally, I snazzy myself up with Dockers and loafers.

I’m originally from Chillicothe, Ohio, where I was born and raised. I have a suburban/semi-rural background. I went to college at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, and graduated in 1990 with a degree in computer science, after changing majors from chemical engineering, which I did not like as much, and at which, to be honest, I did not fare as well. My first job out of school was in Shelby, Ohio, writing embedded software, for campus-wide fire, life-safety and security automation systems. This job later moved to Westlake (a suburb of Cleveland), when the company was bought out by Thorn Automated Systems (Yeah, that’s the same guys as Thorn EMI). I moved to a new job in the California Central Valley in 1996, when the firm for which I worked finally packed up their Westlake R&D and consolidated their operations by moving most of the Westlake functions to the UK. Surprisingly enough, I got a call from a headhunting firm the very day I was let go from Thorn and started interviewing the next day with the company out here in California which subsequently hired me. They were a small outfit specializing in home security panels and were an OEM for control panels for home security systems installed by a bunch of firms (like Brinks Security). Of course, to make life interesting, my local job also moved, to wet, rainy, cold, Oregon, so I had to get another one. The job I have now is in the Bay Area, and now I enjoy a ninety-minute commute each way. It’s pretty interesting. I’m writing embedded software that runs automated electrical grid distribution equipment -- switch controls. When your power goes out on you, and then magically comes back on after only a second or two, most likely you’re thanking the guys at S&C Electric Company, Automated Systems Division.

All I Need

In 1991 I married my college sweetheart, whom I met winter quarter of 1986. Crystal is an artistic, warm, funny, smart, lady whose company and beautiful smile I had come to cherish very much. We became voluntary amateur eugenicists in 1990 (and so is everyone who has ever procreated). I have two wonderful daughters: Jackie, born in 1990 and Shannon, born in 1993. They've been home-schooled until September 2003 and have tried or are involved in a wide variety of pursuits and activities, like Girl Scouts, horseback riding, camping, music, martial arts, etc, for which I blame their mother's bad influence, mostly. Both are blonde and blue-eyed, smart as whips, and cute as hell, and bound to cause me gray hair when they are old enough to attract the attention of guys. I fear the day is damned near nigh.

A Change (Would Do You Good) -or-
It's the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine)

In September of 2003, after having a somewhat problematical relationship with me for some number of years, my wife of twelve years packed up our daughters and a goodly portion of our common assets, and moved into an apartment with someone else, after she decided that she wanted a divorce. As of February 2004, that process is still ongoing. It should complete sometime in April of 2004. For the curious, divorce is sort of like having a tooth pulled, every day, for six months. On the last day (corresponding to the day when the final papers are to be filed) the legal system cuts off your left arm and puts it in a plastic bag, with your teeth, gives that to you, and sends you home, telling you that you can mount your arm on the wall, like a trophy, and get on with your life now, and good luck. I wouldn't recommend the procedure to my worst enemy. Getting used to being single and alone and without place is very difficult. I'm still not entirely sure exactly what I feel about this whole thing. Part of me doesn't want to see it happen, not that I have much choice in the matter, but part of me also dreads that she will change her mind and I will have to figure out how to deal with my wife if she decides that she doesn't want to go through with it. Frankly, a man gets tired of being repeatedly left by a woman to whom he has become very attached and to whose happiness he had pledged his life and love. Of course, looking on the bright side, singledom is also, truth be told, something of an adventure every once in awhile. I am becoming used to it again, frighteningly enough, as hard as that has been. Nietzsche was right, what does not kill us only makes us stronger.

It's Only Me (The Wizard of Magicland)

So, why do I call myself Montecristo? Well, I've always been a romantic, a fan of swashbuckling, and I've always been a fan of Alexandre Dumas. In addition to this, I am a big believer in self-improvement, perseverence, initiative and self-discipline. The Count of Monte Cristo is the story of a man who loses everything but his will to survive and his ability to learn. He gradually recovers himself and learns to be more than he has been before, to overcome his losses and achieve even greater values than those of which he had previously imagined himself capable.

Stability results were moderately high which suggests you are relaxed, calm, secure, and optimistic.

Orderliness results were moderately low which suggests you are, at times, overly flexible, improvised, and fun seeking at the expense of reliability, work ethic, and long term accomplishment.

Extraversion results were moderately low which suggests you are reclusive, quiet, unassertive, and secretive.

Trait snapshot: messy, tough, disorganized, fearless, not rule conscious, likes the unknown, rarely worries, rash, attracted to the counter culture, rarely irritated, positive, resilient, abstract, not a perfectionist, risk taker, strange, weird, self reliant, leisurely, dangerous, anti-authority, trusting, optimistic, positive, thrill seeker, likes bizarre things, sarcastic

Jack -- relax.
Get busy with the facts,
No zodiacs or almanacs,
No maniacs in polyester slacks,
Just the facts,
Gonna kick some gluteus max.
It's a parallax -- you dig?
You move around,
The small gets big. It's a rig.
It's action -- reaction --
Random interaction,
So who's afraid,
Of a little abstraction?
Can't get no satisfaction,
From the facts?
You better run, homeboy --
A fact's a fact,
From Nome to Rome, boy.

What's the deal? Spin the wheel.
If the dice are hot -- take a shot.
Play your cards. Show us what you got --
What you're holding.
If the cards are cold,
Don't go folding.
Lady Luck is golden;
She favors the bold. That's cold.
Stop throwing stones --
The night has a thousand saxophones.
So get out there and rock,
And roll the bones.
Get busy!

We go out in the world and take our chances,
Fate is just the weight of circumstances,
That's the way that Lady Luck dances,
Roll the bones.

Neil Peart, Rush: "Roll the Bones"

What I Am (Is What I Am -- Are You What You Are or What)

According to the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator personality theory, I am an INTP, which means an Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Perceiver. We're a rather scarce breed, representing only about 1% (although we're over-represented online due to our attraction to computers and technical fields). One MBTI web site has this to say about INTP’s:

INTPs are pensive, analytical folks. They may venture so deeply into thought as to seem detached, and often actually are oblivious to the world around them.

Precise about their descriptions, INTPs will often correct others (or be sorely tempted to) if the shade of meaning is a bit off. While annoying to the less concise, this fine discrimination ability gives INTPs so inclined a natural advantage as, for example, grammarians and linguists.

INTPs are relatively easy-going and amenable to most anything until their principles are violated, about which they may become outspoken and inflexible. They prefer to return, however, to a reserved albeit benign ambiance, not wishing to make spectacles of themselves.

A major concern for INTPs is the haunting sense of impending failure. They spend considerable time second-guessing themselves. The open-endedness (from Perceiving) conjoined with the need for competence (NT) is expressed in a sense that one's conclusion may well be met by an equally plausible alternative solution, and that, after all, one may very well have overlooked some critical bit of data. An INTP arguing a point may very well be trying to convince himself as much as his opposition. In this way INTPs are markedly different from INTJs, who are much more confident in their competence and willing to act on their convictions.

We INTP's have our own website at INTP.org. There is also an INTP mailing list there which is open to anyone and everyone -- INTP's and the people who have to deal with them. It generates a prodigious amount of mail, but if you want to know something obscure (and more than likely useless) the INTP Brain Trust will surely know it.

Yeah, that fits. As for philosophy, I’m an individualist Objectivist (reformed). I agree with much of what Rand had to say, but doubt the infallibility of the Pope of Objectivism. I believe that existence exists, and that reason is the most effective tool for apprehending it. I believe that enlightened self-interest, rightly understood, is the proper ethical behavior. One place where I differ with many Objectivists is politics. I am an unabashed anarcho-capitalist. I believe that structured anarchy in a capitalist market framework can be made to work and that government itself is something of a contradiction. I think George Washington was onto something when he said, "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." I will go him one better and say this: The exent of government, the domain of the political sphere, delineates the failure boundary of imagination in society. For those who do not have a well-grounded understanding of where I am coming from, my beliefs put me somewhat in the Libertarian camp, but I really don’t think politics is the answer to the world’s problems and I think the term "limited government" is an oxymoron similar to almost pregnant.

"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather we have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."
-- Aristotle

"Progress in every age results only from the fact that there are some men and women who refuse to believe that what they know to be right cannot be done."
-- Russell W. Davenport

Invictus
William Ernst Henley

Out of the night that covers me
Black as the pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody but unbowed

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid

It matters not how strait the gate
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul

Fear the Secret Loyal Order of Bob Supremacists!

I made one of those LiveJournal Trading Cards, but it wouldn't display properly on my info page (stupid LiveJournal code parser). So, I put it in an entry.

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