J’s blog

I was born in Manhattan, raised in Ohio, and if you consider what I’ve done since growing up, I grew up here in Austin.

Invariably, when someone asks how I am doing, I respond

I am having way too much fun for my own good.

By day, I am a usually mild-mannered network administrator, specializing in unix/linux administration (go gentoo!). My two biggest work-related claims to fame are that I introduced Michael Dell to the web in 1993 (“click on the blue stuff” was the extent of my training), then I helped write security policies for IBM. It also amuses people who know me to retell the story of when I called the then-president of Earthlink “stupid” (for not having any backup data centers). I have participated in turnaround-consulting (yes, I was one of “the Bobs“). I have attended both UT and Carnegie-Mellon, but never stayed at either long enough to get my degree.

By night I am Grace’s Daddy. Pretty soon she will have her own blog, and you can follow her version of growing up there. I have apparently mellowed much since she was born in a minivan outside the Ob/Gyn’s office in late 2001.

By Friday mornings I am a volunteer at computer lab at her school.

By the weekends I am a bad golfer This is an improvement.  I used to be just s schmuck with some clubs in a cart on a course, using my 3-iron to trench for fiber-optic cable.

I prefer summer over winter, teamwork over competition, unusual over common, new over used, hot over cold, New York over LA, sunset over sunrise, beach over mountains, tequilla over gin, ubuntu over windows, and Grace over you.

I tend to like new things, yet I am very much a creature of habit.

I often make bad puns, and like to be inappropriate on purpose, for the humor effect. I also am quite good at combining disparate ideas to make people laugh.

Musically, I tend to prefer Philip Glass, light jazz, Annie Lennox, classical music, and Peter Gabriel. In film, I prefer Woody Allen, David Lynch, David Lean, Stanley Kubrick, the Coen brothers, and of course Hitchcock. For television, I like 60 minutes, Twin Peaks, The Simpsons, britcoms , Dirty Jobs (actually, almost everything on Discovery) and Dexter (untrimmed for CBS).

The best sound in the world is Grace’s giggle.

And, yes, I go by “J” — one letter (you, however, may use as many as you like). Because Cher, Sting, Bono and Madonna all require too much work. Whenever anyone learns my full name, they immediately understand why…