The Moon is rising. From their hollows, creatures emerge. Blinking, still remembering the harsh light of daytime, they come. All is quiet and waiting. The moon is rising.

MOON RISING (Half-moons are where the witches live. Or so they say.) MOON RISING





Just so everyone knows, I'd rather be right than happy.
This bit is a new bit. The stuff below is still true, now that I've stopped doing, um, stuff.
I'm afraid being in CS has shot my vocabulary all to hell. Actually -- I wish the explanation were that simple. The real fact of the matter, like I explained to someone (and it was probably me) sometime (probably at night, like it is now always) somewhere (waiting to catch a bus most likely), is that I have a machine that can comprehend the universe. This is a slightly different feeling from the casual omniscience that most folks my age have, or so it seems to me. This is way more dangerous. It is cool and clear and totally unshatterable -- diamonds forged from thoughts pressed hard. I don't think there's any point going into detail. As I am gradually wandering towards making my explanation, the problem is that this thing which is my immense machine built just-next-door has been evolved slowly and grown in a private tank.

Oh, damn. Let me try this again. I haven't lost my vocabulary but wandered into a world with different things, so of course the old words aren't any good any more. Old words spoken now, I mean. I have great affection (affectation) for old words spoken then. I think it's pretty clear that I like me. I think that may be not quite hip enough to admit, but effective teaching means a certain amount of egotism anyway, so what the hell, right?

Anyway. I think the way I used to be is cute and can step away and say it now, proudly loudly oddly. But (and this is important) that was then and this is now. Heh. As if the divide is ever that clean. But (and I do mean it this time) the machine grinds on and me with it. I don't really have a handle on any of this stuff anymore, and that's ok. I'm mostly a theory person -- I think I've got that part all down. It's mostly a matter of implementing the truth, now that I've got it. And like I said at the beginning, I'd rather be right than happy. But -- and here's the kicker, and the last "but" for now -- I wouldn't mind being happy, dammit.

I think I'll put a line in to show you when this stops. Here: (Oh, wait. I think the note I mentioned below is important enough to repeat up here. Ok, now keep going.)


This is the umpteenth revision I've done of this web page. My interest in writing html rather goes in cycles, and I suspect I'm on an upswing right now. And, heck, now that I've moved from Seattle to Madison (where? Wisconsin. It's the capitol.) for grad school at the University of Wisconsin in the Computer Sciences department, I've got lots of free time. So here we go.

As usual, this evolution stuff is pretty slow going. I like to keep bits of old things I've written around even if it's not strictly accurate or up-to-date, because, well, it's true because it was true when I wrote it.

What's here? I saw someone's definition of love as "feeling like everyone else while thinking 'Wow! No one has ever felt this way before!'" I think that's a pretty accurate summary of life, too. Unfortunately, the reason we constantly repeat patterns in life is because we need to. The only sort of compromise I've been able to come up with is fine, I'll be like every fucking other person, but I won't have to like it.

That might explain why I have a links page. On the other hand, it doesn't explain the lynx page. I used to have the "friends of mine" link, but, well, that's dumb. I mean, who cares who your stupid friends are? Besides, nobody I know has a home page. Well, nobody except for Eric, that is, who has recently bowed to peer pressure and spiffed up his page.

I have the pointless perl scripts, the fiction of varied quality, and the page about me page. Like I said before, I still like the edge of twilight best, which is why I've kept the bits of the page the same that are the same as they used to be. If you follow. The following stuff I said before, too, but it's all still punchy and has that snap to it that's so lacking on the web these days, so here we go:

There are a good number of things which all web sites are required by law to have. I might as well get them out of the way.

There's all sorts of other stuff I could put here, like, oh, a link to my early practice perl code, or a link to let you avoid ever having to use the "Open Link" button is here, and so on.

But I am not putting up this site for the purpose of making it easy to get to a lot of links to elsewhere quickly. I am putting up this site because it amuses me to do so. That's why I have things like this linked from my main page, or things like this. Do you follow? Thanks.

[Notice that these pages are lynx-friendly. This is because I am lynx-friendly. I am also kind to children and small animals.]

If you haven't read it yet, please read this.

[Sadly, I'm too lazy to update these pages most of the time, so they tend to float around nebulously most of the time in various stages of up-to-datedness. (ironically enough*, I haven't changed this statement in a while)]
* ha! I love saying things are ironic!

[Marc Friedman thinks every page should have a link to itself. He may well be right.]

[That stuff is all so clever, I'm going to keep it just as it is. Hot damn, I'm pithy. Anyway, just to place this comment, this is written at the same time as this but rather after this.]

[This is one of the few pages I have where I've done anything about the appearance of the page. I'm afraid I'm more of a textual than a visual person -- just use your imagination to change the background colors.]