I'm about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. I'm taking a leave of absence from my work to be a roadie for Lionel Ritchie's North American fall tour. I know it will be a life-changing experience, and hope to play at an arena near you. I don't know how long my adventure will last - we may go on to do Europe and South America (Lionel is big there).
I've had a lot of interests and am enjoying keeping the gears of my mind spinning. I love the excitement of engineering and need a creative outlet always. I might not have been an engineer; there are plenty of other things that would satisfy me, too. Architecture is neat, and I like the possible interactions of space, nonspace, light, angle, color, texture. Poetry fits in this same way, where seizing a particular construction can be immensely rewarding.
I guess I like photography for the same reason. It's been said a painter adds elements to their paintings, whereas a photographer must reduce the world down to a single pose.
I love coffee houses, and some of the starbucks are neat, not because of the sterile-coffeehouse-in-every-stripmall attitude, but because they treat their employees right, which is partly why I bought some of their stock. They can't beat a little hole-in-the-wall with non-matching silverware (not plasticware) - mill mountain in blacksburg, VA, greenberry's in McLean, VA (got $200k? Want to start a franchise?), the Rev in herndon VA, tryst in adams morgan, DC, misha's in alexandria VA, and even though their service seriously sucks and I've stopped going, xando on dupont circle (DC).
Favorite musicians include The Cowboy Junkies, Mazzy Star (please tour again!), Ani Difranco (please record the booger song), Dead Can Dance, and disappear fear. I like music by Morcheeba and (recently) Hooverphonic. and For something different, try klezperanto.
Hacking has always been fun. I mean hacking in the traditional sense: figuring out what makes things tick and pushing them to do things they weren't intended to do. Witness my vmu page.
So, what do I look like? Here's one picture; here's another (124kb) -- I'm on the bottom in both pictures..
I can be reached via email at john (at) maushammer.com -- change the (at) to @ to make the address correct.
To reach my sister, use annrobbins (at) yahoo.com -- again change the (at). To get to my parents, use by dad's first initial (R) and his last name, and then append @aol.com.
If you run a program that picks email addresses out of webpages, and then you use the accumulated addresses to send spam, I suggest you also get in contact with a%42use@aol.com and a%42use@msn.com. and a%42use@yahoo.com. Call it a little experiment - I'm hoping that your program doesn't recognize the embedded 'b' in these addresses and these places will quickly shut down your reply-to addresses.
