John Stimson's Colossal Waste of Time
My subsequent research involved design and testing of electromechanical bandpass filters using coupled micromechanical resonators, and exploration of nonlinear and chaotic phenomena in relation to MEMS.
I have also served as one of the MacDonald group's computer gurus (with 20+ group members and 8+ different operating systems, multiple gurus are needed). I helped set up the Linux server which handles file service and printing for the group's Windows and MacOS boxes, and have fielded numerous questions on using Windows and UNIX.
Westward ho! In June of 1999, I started work as a member of the Electron Beam Technology Group at National Semiconductor in Santa Clara, CA. My group is responsible for the support and development of electron beam probing capabilities at NSC.
Every once in a while, I dust off my guitar or bass to practice, but it's pretty miserable. I suspect that it would be more fun if I had a nicer guitar, like, say, an Ovation, but it's hard to justify the cost if I'm not sure I'm really going to practice. Right now, I'm more inclined to return to my first instrument, the trumpet. I'm just a little worried about annoying the neighbors.
My interest in music reproduction is such that I spent much of my free time in the Summer of 1994 researching loudspeaker design, then designing and building a set of speakers for my stereo. I have also designed and built a couple of preamplifiers for my guitars: one built into the body, and one external.
I also enjoy a large number of athletic/outdoor activities, including: racquetball, sailing, windsurfing, waterskiing, kayaking, unicycling, biking, downhill skiing, cross-country skiing, frisbee (ultimate or otherwise), and climbing (artificial structures only, so far). I used to play four-square, which can be pretty vicious when you get college students playing it, but I doubt I could round up enough people to play now that I don't live in a dorm.
Recently (okay, almost 5 years ago, but more recently than anything else in this dusty old homepage) I got hooked on autocrossing. It's like downhill slalom skiing, but with cars. And I thought downhill skiing was an expensive sport!
It's a well known fact that nerds (at least the ones who are still in school) have no life. However, some of them like to quantify exactly how much of a life they don't have using a life roster, a system which I believe originated at Berkeley. Others just like to display to others exactly what sort of nerd they are, using one of the many versions of the Geek Code.
Many nerds have read Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter (I am one of them), and think recursion is a pretty nifty idea. I've developed an online demonstration which was developed in conjunction with Cliff McCarthy's Webcrawler Trap.
Of course, I read science fiction, when I can find some that doesn't appear to be complete drivel on first inspection (this can be difficult, as a direct consequence of Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap).
Finally, for those persistent enough to have made it this far, I have an archive of egghead humor from Usenet and other sources.
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