I learned a lot from hitchhiking -- both my own adventures traveling by thumb, and later at the wheel myself paying my debt backwards. Because both parties know the ride will come to an end often things are shared, and personality versions beta-tested, in a way that wouldn't happen anywhere else.
I don't take well to being managed and I'm not a very good manager. While this narrows my career path somewhat, it also allies me with those comfortable working in parallel rather than hierarchy. Which is much more fun.
I am easily distracted.
I enjoy the movies. I enjoy interesting movie theaters more. Which means that sometimes I end up seeing horrible movies in wonderful theaters.
I love travel in all its hues, and I would travel all the time if I could figure out a way of making it work (and continuing to maintain a home base to come home to).
I am the father of an 8 year old son named Oliver. Every Saturday morning we go the Farmer's Market and go through the same routine -- buy a toasted bagel with smoked salmon, pick up a coffee for me and a smoothie for Oliver, then pick up an iced tea and a chocolate chip cookie to go. Departures from this routine cause stress for both of us.
And yet I maintain vigorously that I am not a creature of habit.
My partner (and Oliver's mother) Catherine and I have been together for 17 years, living in sin. She is an artist, a maker of things and ideas and in many ways we are complete opposites of each other. But for some reason our incompatibilities are compatible and I love her dearly.
I watch too much television for my own good.
I started drinking coffee 18 months ago for the first time.
I was born in the USA, raised in central Canada, and have lived in the teeny Canadian province of Prince Edward Island for 15 years.
I have worked as a programmer since I was 14, with gaps to work as a newspaper typesetter, radio producer, data entry clerk, organic producer deliverer, graphic designer and teacher.
I enjoy systems thinking, and it is the thread that ties all my work together.
In many situations I adopt the role of iconoclast and/or shit disturber, partly because it's more fun, but also because it's proved a useful tool to understand the ideas of others.
I subscribe to The New Yorker magazine, but I never read the poetry and only read the fiction when I'm hard pressed. Indeed I find the notion of fiction implausible, and seldom read novels or short stories.
For 10 years I've blogged at ruk.ca -- about 990,000 words so far. I find it very hard not to write; it's how I process the things that happen to me and it's how I keep myself from going crazy. Sometimes it gets me into trouble, and often it dries up the dinner time conversation because, well, all the good stories are on the blog already.
I am shy, but not so much as I used to be. Since moving to a small rural province I have become much better at making small talk.
I am very, very curious. Sometimes that gets me into trouble too.