Since you clicked "me" on the left, I'll assume you have a marginal interest in my biographical information. I'll keep it short. I grew up mostly in an unpleasant suburban city north of Dallas called Plano, home of the fightin' trust funds. I didn't really like the city growing up. The schools are good, although my high school graduating class was a ludicrous 1605 (seriously). We made national news in the mid-80's because of an outbreak of suicides. We were again in the headlines back in the late 90's because of a serious heroin problem. More recently, a football player's suicide- allegedly linked to depression resulting from stereoid abuse- landed Plano again in the headlines. Well, I'm done trying to sell you on Plano. On a more positive note, the star of Eurotrip was from my school (actually, we were both on the speech/debate team). Also, the guy who plays Wash in Firefly is from my school.

I attended UT Austin for undergrad in electrical and computer engineering, where I graduated with high honors. Honestly, my choice of majors was surprisingly simple -- my friends were doing it, and it seemed like a good way to get a job. In hindsight I kind of wish I did physics/chemistry/math, or maybe chemical engineering. Something with physical chemistry, at least.

After that I enrolled at Rice University for graduate school specializing in scanning tunneling microscopy of polymer molecules, nanowires, and monolayer films. It was something of a niche topic, though, but at least I had a lot of freedom to do what I wanted. I graduated with an M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering. I now work at the University of Washington in the chemistry department working on advanced imaging tools for studying plastic solar energy materials, primarily involving variants of scanning probe microscopy.

I guess that's it. I like basketball (NBA, yes; Euroleague, no), board games (Settlers of Catan, yes; Monopoly, no), science (Renewable energy, yes; perpetual motion machines, no), politics (Obama, yes; Palin, no), going to concerts (Belle & Sebastian, yes; Miley Cyrus, no), the occasional poker game (in person, yes; online, good god no), good books ( God of Small Things, yes; Twilight, no), and parenthetical statements (meta humor, (((yes))); actual humor, yeah...not so much).

And we're out!