Ah, the About page. This is where I try to tell you who I am. In the States, it’s customary to list what you do for a living, as if what you do is who you are. As for that, I’ve done some things in messaging, security, identity, privacy, policy, and law for places you’ve probably heard of. For most of those gigs, I was trying to protect people or look out for their interests in some way. I used my specialized knowledge to try and bend the arcs of those who pursued profit to include some care for those they deemed to be the product. It was a way to live with myself, too. I was doing an incredibly hard thing (getting tech bros to care about people as well as profit), but I had more successes there than you’d think.

A few years back, for a number of reasons, I had to stop. The stress was terrible, and my body ultimately gave me a choice to stop or it would stop me. There were signs before then, I got to be the youngest person in the cardiac ward by far on a number of occasions–cardiology departments still compliment me as to how young I still am and how good I still look as a cardiology patient with a set of stents in his chest. After those experiences, any remaining sense of immortality is long gone.

Other things:

  • I’m a late-diagnosed autistic person who masked well enough that I believed unqualified-but-smart folks who said there was no way. Apparently if you put in massive effort so you’re not awkward enough anymore, you get the backhanded compliment of folks denying your reality to your face.
  • I’m a cat dad who remains delighted that these two meatballs are as devoted to me as they are. We had dogs growing up, and my understanding of cats was that they were uncaring psychopaths. They certainly can be that, but they also can be caring little balls of curiosity and entertainment.
  • I’ve gone electric for my transportation needs. The juice I use is generated by a few dozen solar panels, so my cruises through the neighborhood for fun don’t burn any fossil fuels. I can zip around without feeling bad about it or worrying about the price of gas. I’ve found I don’t need the reassurance of cylinders and revving engines for my sense of masculinity. I’m totally ok leaving it behind.
  • I’m ambivalent on the Oxford Comma, but I hate the Grocer’s Apostrophe. Generally, I’m trying to stop keeping score with spelling or grammar like I was taught to, instead trying to default to “did you know what they meant?” and leaving it at that. But using an apostrophe for every pluralization offends me.

I’m not on any of the big social media platforms. I left that one microblogging platform when the electric car wingnut took it over, and I don’t use any of the platforms that the pasty automaton runs. I do maintain a presence on federated (which means decentralized, not a reference to federal government) alternative services like Mastodon for microblogging and Pixelfed which is an open-source kind picture-sharing service. It’s acknowledged though that the kind of people you’ll find there are exactly who’d you expect–the kind of people who’d use those alternatives. As such, it’s not the equivalent experience at all, and for many it’s inadequate. Nothing really new has happened to revolutionize that space or replace it though, so it is what it is for now.

Anyway, there’s my stab at a revised About page. I’m going to try to remember to update it at least annually. I do continue to strive to learn and grow, even in this next phase of my life. If I can think of anything else that might be relevant for this page, I’ll add it.