Hello

It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of people

Welcome to the dusty corners of my brain. I am a mid/upper 20s programmer from the Midwest. Born and raised a Catholic, I am now an agnostic Taoist. Politically, I am a liberal (from the Latin liber – free), which includes an open mind for other ways of doing things.

My Family

I consider myself to be a very lucky man. I have a beautiful wife that I love more than anything. She is my better half. Our three year old son is one of the sweetest kids I have seen. And, if I do say so myself, he is brilliant. He started wanting to use my laptop before he was one. He became obsessed with Windows Media Player and iTunes by the time he was 18 months (he loved the visualizations, "flowers" as he called it). He now knows more about how to use them than I do. He knows how to read about 100 words, not just through memorization of the books.

Me

As I said before, I am a programmer. I'm not just a programmer for a job, I enjoy it. If I am not reading, playing with my son, or playing a game, I'm likely hacking some small project together, studying a new programming language (how I met my wife), or reading up about other technologies. I believe in open source, although I am torn philosophically between free as in beer and free as in speech. I am a Linux user by choice and a Windows user by necessity; I don't use Macs for a number of reasons, which my wife harangues me about regularly...

My Blog

I have a number of reasons for starting this blog. A large part of it is peer pressure. Almost everyone I know is a blogger now. My wife has been doing it well (and much better than I'm sure I will) for a while now. Many of my friends have blogs. And most of the people I admire in the industry do as well. I also just need a place to rant sometimes and let other shoot me down and show me where I am being an idiot. I also try to keep up to date on what is happening in the world and sometimes I find something that needs to be echoed far and wide and I just don't have the vocal cords for that.

I want this blog to be an open place for people to talk. Like I said before, I try to be open minded. If you think what I am saying is wrong, please shoot me down and show me your point of view. My opinion is based on the knowledge I have; if you have better information, I will appreciate being enlightened. But please keep it civil. Too often these days what once could be civil discussions break down to "You're just a right-wing nut job/war mongerer/etc." "You're just a leftist snob/You hate our country/etc." That's not what this blog is for.