…me

I’ve operated a nuclear reactor under hundreds of feet of water. I’ve traveled to distant lands and experienced foreign cultures. If you owned an electronic device anytime between 1997 and 2009 that used memory (things like smartphones, Macs, PCs, Xboxes, Playstations, iPods, little things like that), chances are pretty good that I personally worked on one of the machines that helped make those memory chips. These days I maintain and repair computer and electronics systems on an offshore oil rig, everything from a typical office PC to dynamic positioning systems to industrial automation and robotics. I’ve followed a very unconventional career path.

I’ve been described as “an evil genius with a conscience, a sick puppy, a sensitive and compassionate person, and a lot of fun.”

I love movies. I love intelligent movies, ones like Inception and The Fountain that grab you by the brainstem and make you sit up, pay attention, and think. I love so-called popcorn movies like Armageddon and The Fast and the Furious that don’t care about things like real-world physics because they’re too busy making sure you’re having a good time. I love movies you can’t really pigeonhole like Baraka and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind that bring something entirely new to the screen and end up setting a precedent for other movies to follow. I can forgive bad acting, maybe even enjoy it, but a boring plot will kill a movie for me every time.

I love games. I played D&D back when it came in a red box and a blue box and you had to color in the numbers on the dice with a crayon that came with them. I had a Colecovision when it was the state-of-the-art in home gaming systems. My main impetus for getting a PC was so I could play Microsoft Flight Simulator. I’m not nearly as good at FPS games as I wish I was but I love them anyway. I prefer the sorts of RTS games that don’t require twitch reflexes. I’m thoroughly enjoying the board/card gaming renaissance and love a good game of Gloom or Sentinels of the Multiverse. One of these days I’m going to have the time and schedule to run an Eclipse Phase campaign.

I like to write. I like to joke with people, telling them, “I live a rich fantasy life.” I’ve whole worlds in my head that occasionally leak out through my fingers and into readable form. I’ve written in one form or another for almost thirty years. Even though my interests tend towards sci-fi, my writing leans more towards the fantasy realm. Alas, my first short story, “The Cafeteria Food Blob,” written when I was 14, hasn’t survived the passage of time. In 2011, my short story “Full Circle” was published in the anthology When The Hero Comes Home from Dragon Moon Press. Since then I’ve had several other short stories published along with my first novel, all of which you can find at my author pages on Goodreads and Amazon.

I used to own a t-shirt that, at the time, was legally classified as a munition.

I graduated from high school when I was sixteen.

I believe in personal responsibility, a big mug of hot chocolate on cold rainy mornings, transhumanism, and the serial comma.

Most people seem to find me pretty interesting but I think of myself as a regular sort of guy. I just try to be the best person I can be and let the rest fall where it may.

…this thing here

I’ve blogged in one form or another since 2001. For nearly eight years I used LiveJournal until letting it fall by the wayside near the end of 2009. I continued with Facebook in 2010, but it’s hard to lay down serious thoughts in 420 characters. And so I find myself here, with proper blogging software once more. It doesn’t have quite the same social aspects as LJ did, but that’s OK. As I’ve grown up, so has my writing. It’s time to start treating it accordingly.

The background image comes courtesy of NASA and the Hubble Space Telescope. It’s a stellar jet in the Carina Nebula, taken by the Hubble’s WFC3 camera. You can read more about it here and get the original image in a variety of formats here. I also use the image on my personal business cards.

…the name

Oh, my blog’s name? It’s a roundabout reference to Briareos, my usual nom de net which started out way back in the day as a reference to the Appleseed character. These days, though, it seems like I need fifty heads and a hundred hands to keep up with everything going on in my life. It’s funny how life works out like that.