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I am a geek, and I am proud of it. I use geek as a compliment to my friends, and am proud to have the term applied to me. To me, being a geek means being curious about how things work and how to use things more effectively. Most of my friends here are geeks - they are graduate students and almost all grad students are geeks inherently. It is just that some are bio geeks and some are computer geeks and some are psychology geeks - but all are interested in something enough to try and figure out more about how it works.

My particular take on geeking is that I like to know how things work so that I can make them work improperly or make them work better. While this is directly applicable to computers, and I use it often in designing protocols and in the computer security stuff I do, it also applies to other things.

I end up reading books on many different subject, mostly science oriented, just because I am curious about things in general. Recently I have been reading a lot about social psychology. People are interesting and it is fascinating to realize why we do the things we do. I particularly enjoyed a book titled "Influence" by Robert Cialdini - it is all about how people are influenced to do things that they might not otherwise do, and how they can even be happier after doing this. I've been trying to use what I learned there to realize when people are trying to persuade me and to recruit volunteers for things. It works pretty well both ways. Just another tool to help me in my quest for world domination.
I was in the Army for a while. When people ask me how long I was in, I invariably reply "three years, eight days", which draws a laugh 'cause it sounds like I was counting the seconds. The truth is that for the most part I was too busy to do that, but I know I went in on a July 23rd and got out an August 1st three years later, so it works out easily.

Being in the Army was a very good experience for me in many ways, and a bad one in others. I got to do many exciting things like drive tanks and parachute from airplanes and fly dangling from a rope under a helicopter and blow things up (which is cool, but don't try this at home. Or in public, either). I was in charge of between 22 and 44 people at different times, and learned about leadership and management (two completely separate things). I found out that I can go for a few days without sleep and that happiness in life starts with being warm and dry. I got to meet a lot of people that I otherwise would not have, given my geographical and social situation. And other people are good people, even when they are not from where I am or as educated as I am or when they don't have as much money as I do.

The bad part of being in the Army is that you learn to suck things up pretty darn well. Have to carry a 120 pound rucksack a long way? Suck it up. Cold and wet and hungry? Suck it up. Pretty dissatisfied with you social life? Hate where you live? Miss your personal freedom? Suck it all up. I was really good at sucking things up and still can on occasion. The problem with it is that it starts to creep into other aspects of your life. Girlfriend sleeping with someone else? Oh well. You dog died? Huh. No point in getting upset or aggravated. Win the lottery? Yeah, that's ok. No big deal though. You'll probably lose most of it in taxes, so why get excited. After a while sucking it up starts to suck the passion and emotion out of life, which makes being a person pretty boring. I'm trying hard to not suck things up anymore.

My stepfather, Vince, was a spy for the CIA for 34 years. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? But if you think about it, even spies have families and someone has spies for parents. In one case it's me. It is funny being the child of a spy. When I was a little kid we went to Indonesia. I didn't know then what he did then - I just thought he worked at the embassy. In our house we had a big safe, like an armored filing cabinet on steroids. It was normally locked, but one night my parents were getting ready for a party and they left it open. Being a curious little kid, I looked around inside to see what was there. My mom later found me crying in my room. When she asked why I was so upset, I sobbed "Vince is a bank robber!" I had found some rubber license plates that he could slip over the plates on our car so that the bright diplomatic plates would be covered. Naturally, I figured they were for making get always after hold ups.

When I was 10, my parents told me what Vince did. At first, I didn't believe them. I mean, James Bond was a spy and had exciting things and women and villains lurking around. My dad worked in an office and wrote cables and such. Eventually they convinced me, but only by taking me into the CIA headquarters. It was the big family secret - I couldn't tell anyone. And so I didn't, for about 20 years. Well, I told a few people, mostly long term girlfriends and really close male friends, but not that many. It was such a habit to lie that I think I would have passed about any lie detector if asked about it - with enough repetition, the lie becomes the truth. When my step dad retired last spring, he became an overt employee and I was allowed to talk about it for the first time ever, but the lie was so ingrained that it took me a couple of months to stop telling it, and even now I still slip into it occasionally.

People have so many misconceptions about the CIA that it is hard to tell how they will react when they find out what my dad did, though most people take it pretty well. What was funny was that during the time it was a secret there were a few times when people started talking about the CIA and all the bad things that they were doing here and there - and on a couple of occasions, Vince was the station chief in charge of there, and I had been there and met all the folks who worked there and seen some of what they did, so I didn't believe a word of what whoever was telling me. Of course, I couldn't bring the rational, personal experience into the conversation so I just sat and listened and wondered where people got this stuff. It seems so easy to make something you don't understand into a scapegoat for complex problems.

I am proud of what my step dad did.

My father died. Though I expected, logically, that it would eventually happen, it came as a big surprise when it actually did.

I knew right away something bad had happened. I had been off doing a bad job of guiding a raft trip but loving every minute of it because of the other guides and the crews. We got back late one night, and there was a note on the door of the office that said to take my gear and to go home right away and call my mom, and not to help with the rafts. I couldn't wait, so I called from the office. It cost me $18 to find out my father was dead, but I got to hear it from my mom while I cried and one of the guides on the trip earned an eternal place in my heart by just holding me while I absorbed the news.

It was a hard thing to deal with. I always thought that no matter what I could go and just do what needed to be done, but after spending a week back east taking care of what little could be taken care of then, I was completely drained. It took me hours to pack to come back, as I just couldn't get up the energy to do anything. It showed me my limits in a way I had never seen them before.

Out of every bad thing comes some good though. I truly learned who my friends were, as they were all there for me, and I was happy to find that I had many. My family truly rallied with me. I also, strangely enough, became closer to my father. I got to see his many friends and relatives and the people who loved him that I hardly knew before. I got to go through his papers and letters and journals and knew from them that he loved me. I miss him now, and expect I always will. I see funny things here on the net that I want to send to him, and it reminds me of him. I wish I had been closer to him while he were alive.

All I can do now, though, is appreciate being alive myself and appreciate the friends and family I have now and to try to be close to them while I can, in my one short life. I try to remember every day to just enjoy being alive and being with others, and you know, the more I do that the easier it becomes and the more I enjoy just being here myself.

So Lafayette smells like corn. I guess it is only natural (pun intended) since it is in the middle of cornfields, but I never expected the smell to be everywhere. I guess that living on the ocean I got used to the ocean smell, so why not corn? It reminds me of the smell of a brewery when they are cooking up a vat of beer.

I had a mid-west cultrue shock in the Marsh's supermarket. All I wanted to do was make some burritos. I haven't had any in a while, so it seemed a reasonable thing to do. I went into the vegetable section and looked around for things I found, and cilantro, which I didn't find. So I asked the person working there if they had any cilantro. He looked at me like I was speaking Romanian, and though he didn't understand any Romanian, he did get the gist of what I was saying involved his grandmother and a large barrel of rubber cement. So, no cilantro. Ok, I can do without.

So I went for salsa in the "international foods" section, where they keep the wierd stuff like that Mexican rice (its yellow! and has red bits! *What are those?!*) and Ramen noodles, which were in the asian food section, which was Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Indian all mixed together, with little country flags placed randomly around. Of course, salsa, despite being the single most consumed condiment in the United States, is in the International section under a little mexican flag, like you are going to be labelled a wetback for buying something that more Americans eat than any other 3 countries put together. Of course, all they have is jars of medium and mild salsa, and I like the hot stuff. Well, I made the mistake of asking the girl who was stocking that aisle if they had the hot style, the same kind I have had many times before. Our conversation went something like this:

Me (holding jar of medium salsa): Do you all have the hot version of this?

Girl: Oh, that is hot alright.

Me (looking at her like she just suggested something involving my grandmother and a barrel of rubber cement)

Girl: Really, I don't think you could eat it if it were any hotter.

Me: (pause) (pause) Um... (pause) Ok. Thanks.

Girl: Be careful with it!

I just wanted to scream at her "Meduim! MEDIUM! This is not hot! MEDUIM! IT SAYS MEDIUM!"

I bought some root beer barrels to suck on and went home.