I really hate self-indugent drek masquerading as an insightful window into who I really am, but this is a vanity page, so I guess I have to be vain. I was born in Long Beach California in 1960 -- a real California native. I grew up in Orange County, mostly in Huntington Beach (Surf City, d00d!), and attended UC Irvine as a Biology, and then Computer Science major.
I pretty much figured out that I was gay by the time that I was 14, but was rather freaked out about it until I was about 18, or so. It has pretty much colored a lot of my views about life, and has particularly made me angry and disgusted with organized religion. The feeling is quite mutual, I assume.
I have been a life-long little "l" libertarian, which really translates to social tolerance and fiscal conservatism (ie capitalism). I was greatly influenced by Ayn Rand, but I really don't agree with her dogmatic approach to moral absolutism, though her complaints about the limits of moral relativism are well taken. Generally, if she sticks to politics, her polemics are pretty spot on. Her rants against religion are precious too, and I am particularly fond of an essay against the papal encyclical which forbade birth control in the 60's. Her lunacy about music (Beethoven intrinsically bad? Snort.) and other aesthetic issues are best ignored.
I started my own company, Gordian, with two partners in 1985 and left Gordian in January 1994 to live in San Francisco. I've been really happy up here, and really enjoy my view of the entire city from the precipice that my houses is pearched on.
I am an active participant on the newsgroup soc.motss, the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual group. Motss (which stands for member of the same sex) is an interesting and eclectic group with many flavours and moods. Motss consistantly has one of the highest caliber of intellectual discussion that I've found on the net, though it also has its ugly and inane moments.Motss has many cliques, though they are mostly informal. My moving to San Francisco seems to have precipitated out the formation of the Cabal Noir -- a rogue bunch of net.thugs whose job is mostly to have fun, but also keep the newsgroup from becoming insufferably full of itself. We, on the other hand, are full of expensive wine and food. And nothing else. Promise.
I have always cooked, and have been doing so quite a bit since I've moved to San Francisco. I generally always cook dinner on Mondays for Melrose Place, and generally use it as a proving ground for new and innovative recipes I feel like trying/creating. I'm not a professional by any means, but I've had a lot of people tell me I should pursue it. *I*, however, am smarter than that, as I've worked in restaurants before and know what a long, tiring, and thankless job being a cook is. I really cannot fathom how the likes of Alice Waters keeps it up year in and year out. They probably wonder how I can sit in front of a computer all day too, so I guess we're even.Eventually this will point to a page on cooking so you might try it if you're interested.
You cannot be a successful cook if you
And I do in fact love wine. I attribute most of current oenophilic pursuits to the late Howard Faye. I was interested in wine well before I was 18 though, and my folks would take us to wineries in Napa, where I learned some of the basics of wine.
- are skinny
- are not inventive in the face of disaster
- don't like wine
Wine is mostly about taste, and is something that you do by practice. Lots of practice. Many people are hung up on stupid false dichotomies about "red for meat, white for fish and poultry", but it all really depends. Wine radically changes flavor with the dish that you are eating, and so your impressions of that wine too. My best advice is to make a dish and either have a couple of different wines, or make it on different occassions and serve different wines, and watch the difference.
Taste is really an individual thing, so it's really hard to make categoric statements about what is "best" or most "suited" or anything like that. You have to trust your own judgement, but know that no matter what, there is some combination of this food and that wine that you haven't tried and try to keep an open mind. After all, that the perfect accompaniment to a Paul Prudhomme colesterol fest might be a nice Spanish Cava. How else would people have figured out that the perfect mate for a Foie Gras is a Sauternes, after all?
I'm working on a wine page which will eventually have all kinds of stuff on it. Give it a click to see if I have gotten off my lazy butt.
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