![[Me over the Potomac River]](potomac.jpg)
I am a graduate student in the Group in Logic and the Methodology of Science at the University of California, Berkeley ("Cal"), although I often refer to myself more comprehensibly as a math student since the Group is interdisciplinary and that is my primary area. My research is on practical computer-aided methods for solving a class of open problems in probability theory. My advisor is Branden Fitelson in the philosophy department. I hope to finish my PhD by the end of 2007, but that may be optimistic.
I have an office, 826 Evans Hall. I work as a homework grader ("reader") for the mathematics department. I also do contract work as a web programmer. I can be reached by E-mail at or at
I replaced my old slightly flashier web page from 1998 with this simple but more contentful one in January 2007.
To be updated/expanded.
I was born in Monmouth County, New Jersey, part of the "Edison division" of the New York metropolitan area, but at a young age moved to California (Oakland then Lompico near Santa Cruz) and eventually to the Eugene, Oregon area, where I grew up. I attended Magnet Arts Elementary and South Eugene High before moving to Portland, Oregon to attend Reed College. I graduated Reed with a B.A. in mathematics in 1997; my undergraduate thesis, entitled Lambdas, Lists, and Laziness: Some issues in computer language design, examined functional programming. My advisor was Joe Buhler, who has since left the College.
In 1998 I moved to the East Bay to attend Cal. I took a few semesters away, which partly accounts for my long stay. I passed my last qualifying exam on December 19, 2001 and "advanced to candidacy", which the University apparently considers a degree. Initially I was interested in the philosophy of mathematics, but soon more pragmatically focused on mathematical logic, in particular model theory. However, in late 2002 I started research in computational biology. By August 2004 those pursuits had collapsed, and I switched to my present topic, which uses some model theory.
I have lived in Berkeley's co-op system since January 2001 (excepting time away), in five of their houses so far. I am now settled in Lothlórien, although I maintain a boarding contract with Kingman.
I travel when I can, most frequently back to Oregon, and also to New York and the East Coast generally, where I have gone thirteen times since 1999. I also often visit nearby Reno, Nevada and the Tahoe area. A new spot is Montana's Flathead Valley, where my mother moved to in December 2006. I have travelled internationally on occasion: six times to Canada, twice to Europe, once to Mexico, and once to Costa Rica.
I am vegetarian by upbringing. I am now ambivalent about the practice, but have not abandoned it. Partly, meat simply disgusts me.
I am registered Republican and consider myself a right-leaning moderate. My greatest concern is the current uncontrolled immigration. I find common ground with libertarians, but am less extreme and disagree on major points such as free trade.
My computer runs the Linux distribution Fedora 8 with Fvwm. I increasingly program in Haskell, most notably for my thesis work; for my work-for-hire and a few projects I use Perl. I edit with vim and typeset in plain TeX extended with Eplain and my own Gfonts.
My car is a manual 1997 Volkswagen Golf. I've had a Sprint mobile phone since March 19, 2002. I carry a Mountain Ocarina with me always (though I boast no talent). I drink a lot of coffee though I am perpetually trying to cut down. I have taken to wearing Crocs. I like dogs more than cats.
I am not yet certain what I will do with my life. I have explicitly chosen to defer the question, as much as possible, till I finish my degree. An academic position or a research job, either publically funded or in finance, seems most likely.