"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." Aristotle.

Good personal relationships make us happier and more effective. I've devoted much of my life to finding ways to strengthen and leverage relationships using computers. The first company I founded, Chaco Communications, built tools for simulated environments, where people could meet online. We built a kids' environment called Magnet Chat, featuring Hello Kitty and friends, for NTT Data and Sanrio in Japan. Chaco morphed into LikeMinds, which used similarities between people to adaptively recommend movies, music and books (used for the Netflix recommender, and now shipped with IBM WebSphere). I helped with a product called Aria, which aggregated traffic information to show usage patterns when millions of people visit a web site. I created a company, BigTribe Corporation, using mobile phones and locations to help bring people together. I'm very interested in networks of individuals, how those networks structure our lives, and how computers can help.

I love people, and I have over 3000 people in my contacts list. I also love computer science, which requires me to carve out time to ignore people. Spam is a problem, and for me the danger is both commercial spam and personal spam. With many people in my network, the effects of forwarded jokes or online polls can be overwhelming. My solution is to insist that friends follow this rule: They may send me anything that they wrote themselves. They may forward one funny email per year. No online polls! The intended effect of this rule is to force people to be more creative rather than derivative.

I love the outdoors. I grew up in rural Michigan, where teenage summers found me hoisting an aluminum canoe to the nearby Pine River and paddling around, catching carp and frogs, watching dragonflies zoom and mate, swimming in Honeyoye Creek and collecting sheep bones. I wanted to assemble a full spinal column, but the vertebrae didn't come from the same sheep, so I could never make it work. Winters found me cross-country skiing, and bicycling my way through a snowy 4 mile paper route (OK, my parents helped).

In my twenties and thirties, I got more wide-ranging. I backpacked Denali, Yosemite, White Mountains of New Hampshire, Isle Royale, Baja California, Sequoia, Olympic National Park and the North Cascades. While living in Los Angeles, I bought a junky Jeep, named it "Big Fella," unbolted the hardtop, pulled off the doors and drove around in sunglasses. While at a Complex Systems summer school at the Santa Fe Institute, I drove Big Fella up the rugged Pipeline Drive in Los Alamos. If I wasn't a skinny geek, I actually might have looked cool.

I met my domestic partner, Ron Lussier, when he offered, on a gay college activities email list, to take people caving. I offered to take him backpacking in return. A long, email-based relationship started there, finally meeting at the second Lesbian and Gay March on Washington, October 11, 1987. Ron took me caving in a muddy, winding West Virginia cave called McClung's. I took him backpacking in the Grand Canyon, with friends Li-Whei Chen, Doug Trainor and Alen Amirkhanian. Many caving and backpacking trips with Ron ensued. After moving all over the country, not necessarily in synchrony, Ron and I moved in together in 1991. I love Ron because he's got a wild-streak, he's very creative, and, well, he's handsome and charming.

Now, in my forties, I still play outside, but it's more time-limited. I snowboard in the winter, windsurf in the summer, sometimes with gonzo friend Dr. Jack Hodges or quiet friend Dr. Andy Fyfe. I day-hike and mountain bike. I dream about backpacking, but mostly I'm remembering the good times I had with my friends.

I love experiencing and creating art. My mother is an artist, calligrapher, graphic designer and former art professor. I grew up creating plaster sand castings, paintings, paper cutouts, picture books and weavings. I love complex, dramatic, curiosity evoking paintings, photography and calligraphy. Some of my favorite works, which either Ron or I own, are shown in this page.

One of my favorite art creations was Sherry Lewis Shrine, an installation Ron and I built for Burning Man 1998. This 8×8×16 foot puppet theater invited visitors to create their own puppets or put on a puppet show. Such contributions would be rewarded with a Bombay Sapphire Martini. We videotaped most of the puppet shows. We developed a complete branding campaign. The logo featured Lamb Chop, the puppet, holding a Martini glass. We produced brochures outlining the purpose of the shrine and recounting Shari Lewis's life. We created wooden coins that could be used to defer or trade Martini compensation. The logo appeared in huge form on all four sides of the theater, on the brochures and on the coins. On one the last day of Burning Man, our installation was protested by the Sock Liberation Front. They shouted "Save the Socks, Save the Socks!" and demanded that people take off their socks. Participants then disappeared into the semi-autonomous tribal area between Black Rock Desert and San Francisco.

I am fiscally conservative, believing governments should have money before they spend it (but also thinking it is appropriate for governments to tax citizens to pay for common benefits). At the same time, I believe strongly in individual freedoms. I am a life-member of the Sierra Club. At present, this makes me a "new Democrat", but when Republicans were civil libertarians, such as during the emancipation of the slaves, I could have been a Republican. I tend not to believe what politicians say, but watch what they do. You can imagine what I think of George Bush, now providing us a $500 billion deficit, primarily resulting from his $1.5 trillion 10 year tax cut (do the math). I loved Bill Clinton, because I could care less who he slept with, he reversed decades of deficit spending, and the governmental actions he took were ones I supported.

At times I've been active in local and university governance. In 1995, I was elected President of the University of California Student Association--the student government body for all 9 UC campuses--where I led some efforts to divest the UC portfolio of South African stocks. Ultimately we succeeded, with the adoption of a UC Regents resolution in 1986 to divest interests in South Africa. I wrote part of the Regents' resolution. Combined with efforts at other universities, we motivated the US Congress to pass the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act September 9, 1986 over President Reagan's veto. The Act prohibited U.S. trade and other economic relations with South Africa.

When I ran for UC Student Association President in 1985, some students voted against me solely because I was gay. Discrimination continues, but thankfully it's down to a dull roar. Today in many states and communities, lesbians and gays can live comfortable, open lives free of most overt discrimination. However, family law is not so equal. Regarding inheritance taxes, medical visitation rights and adoption law, gay couples continue to face special hurdles. Since my partner and I have been together 15 years, it seems unfair that he cannot inherit my estate tax-free, may be prohibited from visiting me in a hospital, and may not be able to decide my treatment when I'm incapacitated. Married couples automatically receive these benefits. Ron and I spend more time than we should, making legal arrangements to compensate for these discriminatory laws.

In summary, there are some consistent themes: I love people, computers and networks. I seek situations where I can test ideas about how people can work better together. I'm a researcher and experimentalist: for example, these web pages use the most advanced HTML stylesheet features I could get away with when I designed them in late 2002. I am an entrepreneur. I hope you like me!