The Professional Stuff

My professional world revolves around programming and computers. These days that mostly means managing people who are doing interesting stuff with computers, but sometimes I still get to do a few interesting things myself.

I currently work at Google on the Android platform.

I used to maintain OpenBinder, which was started by George Hoffman at Be. When we were acquired by PalmSource, my team there continued developing it and it became one of the foundations of the Cobalt OS. A while ago the machine that PalmSource was hosting it on disappeared, so now I am providing an archive of the code here.

From November 2001 to January 2006 I worked at PalmSource (now owned by Access), managing the high-level frameworks group. For the first couple years I was there, my group was working on what would eventually be called Palm OS Cobalt, which came out at the end of 2003. Unfortunately it never actually shipped on a device while I was there, though we did ship a couple versions of the software to various licensees.

From November 1999 to November 2001 I worked at Be, Inc. (the company no longer exists, so that link is pretty arbitrary) in beautiful Menlo Park, California. My job title when I started there was "Framework Engineer". When Be was "acquired" by PalmSource two years later, my job title was still kind-of that, with some form of management tossed in as well. I eventually become a full-fledged official manager at PalmSource, which was rough but I eventually got used to it. For now, though, I am focused back on software development, and looking forward to it.

Before Be, I worked at a company called Visual Insights in Naperville, Illinois, which amazingly enough still seems to be around in some form. My job there basically involved writing C++ code to make pretty (sometimes even interesting) pictures of what would otherwise be boring data. This job came out of an internship I did at the data visualization group in Bell Labs.

On January 13, 1996, I graduated from Oregon State University with a Master (or, preferably, Mistress) degree in Computer Science. My major professor while there was Dr. Cherri Pancake.

My main research interest at Oregon State was Interactive HTML, a language-neutral system for incorporating client-side scripting into World Wide Web browsers, using both runtime DOM manipulation and program embedding. Unfortunately Java came out while I was in the middle of writing my thesis, making the embedding aspect much less interesting. Sigh...

One of the languages I used with this system is Python, a very high level object-oriented language. It is one of my favorite scripting languages, though I haven't done much with it since school.

While at Oregon State I worked in the Pancake Research Group and the Northwest Alliance for Computational Science and Engineering. Most of my time was spent doing a Java project: a VT100 Telnet client named WebTerm (which later became ArpTelnet). I also put together a set of web pages providing hints for doing web animations, which no longer exist (and that is probably a good thing).

Most of my free time these days is spent contributing to Sequitur for Windows, which is a highly evolved version of the original Sequitur application that was done for BeOS. This is being developed by our software startup company Angry Red Planet.

I programmed for BeOS (before working there) for a number of years, and even have my very own BeBox. I still have a Pentium II running BeOS just for Sequitur, though these days my main machine is running Windows.

I have owned an Amiga of one sort or another since the first A1000 was available, and still have an A3000 sitting around somewhere. During that time, I developed a number of public-domain programs. (Please note, however, that I am no longer supporting these Amiga projects.)

Of course these days like most people I must do most of my development under Microsoft Windows. It's not so bad, though, because what this usually means is in fact doing PalmOS development that just happens to be hosted on Windows.

The Personal Stuff

Here is some of the more personal information about me, if you are actually interested... but don't complain if you don't like what you read. I am also trying to get modern and cool and all, so I now have a web pages at MySpace and Live Journal.

When I have the time, I enjoy reading Science Fiction stories and sometimes even computer manuals. (I hang my head in shame.)

While I generally hate TeeVee, a few years ago I somehow found myself addicted to watching Babylon 5. And now that the show is over, I am back to not watching television. Go figure.

Since buying a house a few years ago, I have gotten increasingly into gardening. What's not to like about growing yummy stuff you can eat??

Sometimes, when I have a chance, I like to write music. I have written enough now that I can even kind-of claim to have an album.

I am a complete and unrepentant Frank Zappa freak.

Any kind of music that is interesting appeals to me, including Aimee Mann, Andrew Bird, Ani DiFranco, Barenaked Ladies, Bill Bruford, Bjork, Bob Geldof, Brand X, Christopher Franke, Delerium, Depeche Mode (before Violator), Don Dilego, Echolyn, Electric Light Orchestra, Ensemble Galilei, Ferron, Genesis (preferrably earlier), Gomez, Indigo Girls, Jane's Addiction, Jill Sobule, John Flomer, Joy Askew, Kevin Gilbert, King Crimson, The Kinsey Sicks, Laurie Anderson, Liquid Tension Experiment, Laurie Anderson, Mickey Hart, Mike Keneally, Minstrels of Mayhem, Oysterhead, Patrick O'Hearn, Paul Adams, Paul Haslinger, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Philip Glass, Pink Floyd, Primus, Queen, The Residents, Richard Searles, The Residents, Roger Waters, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Steve Hackett, Stewart Copeland, Styx, Synergy, Tony Levin, Tribe 8, Vast, Wendy Carlos, and many other groups I don't have net.references for (not that I would promise any of the links here actually work).

While at school, I could often be found playing percussion in the OSU/Corvallis orchestra or percussion ensemble.

Now that I am no longer at school, I have no outlet for my pent-up need to beat on things -- so a while ago I acquired my very own (very cool) V-Drums Custom drum set. I could finally play drums as loud as I want, even when I lived in an apartment!

I am currently involved with two groups in the Bay Area, the Femme Posse and San Francisco Girls of Leather.

I helped put together a BDSM student group while at Oregon State University, called the Evangelical Perv Association. Unfortunately that group now seems to be defunct, but it was fun while it lasted. There are few things better than getting to participate in freshman recruitment with the other student groups! I still have some of the initial material on the Evangelical Perv Association. Unfortunately all of the material that was an the official OSU site (advertisements, newsletter articles, etc) is no longer around.

In November 1994, I got together with a few others and started the Corvallis BDSM Munch, which actually seems to still be around! We originally called this munch the "Possibly Abnormal Munch", as a play on the restaurant we held it at -- Nearly Normal's. When we were kicked out of that restaurant (for apparently being a bit too abnormal), in honor of our original location we renamed ourselves to the "Nowhere Near Normals Munch". Not that anyone besides myself would care, but you can see some old archived material on the munch.

In May of 1996, I was involved with getting Kate Bornstein to Oregon State for a performance.

While living in Illinois, I ran the Chicago munch for a year or two.

I have also been known to write things about perverts, queers, and other abnormal topics.

A required section for any personal home page, as per the HTML specification, here is a small list of some of my friends who have their very own web pages. Also as per the spec, many of these links are broken and out-of-date.