Tell us about yourself. What's your story?
Also from Grinnell (WHAT ARE THE CHANCES!?), but my story does not intersect at the same point that Sam's and Seth's do. I love science. FUCKING LOVE IT. And not just the exciting stuff, but the boring-as-all-hell nitty gritty. I ended up digging deep into genetics and molecular biology in college (at the University of Chicago), taught there after graduation as a teaching assistant for a year, did some traveling, taught myself C++ and Python, worked as a lab tech doing drug screens at Washington University (in St Louis, MO) for a year, got married, and then started grad school at the University of Texas Southwestern. WHEW. I've been doing research for the past 4 years, turned in my dissertation A WEEK AGO TODAY, and will receive my PhD on July 18.
And then I'm going to join Butterscotch.
"WTF!? BUT WHAT ABOUT THE SCIENCE?" I hear you asking. I still love the science, but there is a lot of non-science horseshit going on in that realm and doing it for a living would require being a shitty husband, brother, son, friend, ETC. It turns out that making games is not so different from doing science anyway.
What are some of your favorite things?
Cheez-Its. Those things are like drugs. Also science (did I mention that?), arguing with people, analyzing data, making beautiful graphs, coding, writing sci-fi, and telling people that they are wrong. Also profanity; maybe you noticed.
What's the one thing in the universe that you just can't stand?
Sexism, racism, and homophobia. It's all one thing: idiocy. We grow up in a damn-prejudiced society so we can't help but have some residual "isms." But anyone who doesn't try to be a better person and admit to, and let go of, those backwards-assed behaviors should be CUT OFF. I fall squarely into the Andrew Ti camp on this stuff (check out http://yoisthisracist.com/ to see what I mean). I am grateful for the work that people like Anita Sarkeesian (of Feminist Frequency) are doing to fight sexism in gaming, and I hope to see more of the same for racism and homophobia.
What are you working on these days to make yourself a more amazing person?
FINISHING MY DAMN PHD. And then: (1) learning how to cook; (2) getting into shape; (3) learning electronics; (4) going into fulltime game development.
As of yesterday at 3pm, docs confirmed that I DO NOT HAVE CANCER ANYMORE.
This is after a month preparing for salvage chemo and two stem-cell transplants. The biopsy they did of some lymph nodes stolen from my left arm pit last Thursday came back on all tests as having no cancer cells.
This is completely shocking to myself and my fam, since I was supposed to be admitted yesterday afternoon.
I cannot scream loud enough.