I'm 32 years old and grew up in Silicon Valley. I now live in Austin, Texas where I now study business and computer science. (San Jose State University has become a very bad school.)

When I'm not working, studying or just reading, I like to skate, dance, ski and generally carry on. I especially like disco and dance music and social dancing (especially cha cha, tango and Latin hustle). Except for skiing, Austin is a fun place to do all of that.

I like languages. In addition to American English, I speak and read a little Dutch, French and Japanese.

I've worked as an engineer for computer game, multimedia and server companies for most of my career. (I also have my own lab at home.)

I'm also interested in computer history and aggressively ending poorly targeted direct marketing (SPAM, junk mail and telemarketing).

I've been pretty excited about Apple OS X since when I saw it last year (2001). It's still in its infancy and Apple still has a few kinks to work out, but overall I like it a lot.

I use an Apple iMac with a 600MHz G3 processor. (My wish list: The new flat-panel iMac has a G4 processor and a vector processing unit; the new Apple Xserve has two G4 CPUs and a vector unit.)

I'm curious to see which machines process SETI data fastest...

Answers to questions:

1. We'd need to be pretty arrogant to think we're the only creatures in the universe. It's an awefully big space.

2. A good strong beacon would be a good idea. I'd much rather have our first extraterrestrial contact made using a strong beacon of prime numbers than Regis and Kathy Lee or "reality" TV.

3. I think SETI@home is a brilliant idea, both technical and political. As computer users, we can "vote" to support SETI by voluneering our computer time, plus we get to see what's going on as it happens (not much, but it's an interesting show).