My Menagerie

I collect eccentrics. Brilliant
eccentrics. I'll have to detail
them quasianonymously later. In my
current job I work with very smart
people, which is the most important
thing, besides liking what you do.
Being able to learn from friends
is so cool.

They include a Caltech physics major
who lives like an ascetic because he
doesn't want to work any more;
Los Alamos first generation kids
now working in infosec;
Harvard hyperactives whose ex-wife
was into polyamory; a
PhD biologist who put himself through
school selling cannabis, later his
career slipped from depression,
then he got MS and couldn't read
(but could write, talk, and listen;
I set up a Stephen-Hawkings-like
text to speech for him) and later
fried his brain on cyanide during
an unsuccessful suicide attempt
(I've seen his MRI scans);
a Brit PhD cell biologist, who really
wants to be a botanist, and once
fed some of his carnivorous plants
his own blood (and introduced me
to kif, ie tobac & grass mixes);
and my current coterie at work.

Like soldiers, I have immense loyalty
to my friends at work, even if I doubt
the intelligence of the execs.

BTW, I could make sense of the MRI
scans because I've been fascinated
with neuroscience, pharmacology, etc.
The major theme being: how does matter
think? My longstanding interests in
AI, computational perception, and
computer hardware are also corrollaries.

I remember as a kid loving to take
things apart. Being fascinated how
metal projections and grooves in some
appliance implemented *logic*.

Gotta go.