Meet Jeff
Yes, this is the world wide corner of the web where I get to talk about myself, share my interests with others, express my thoughts, advertise myself to prospective employers and clients, wile away spare time, show off trip photos, and basically be me. Occasionally someone will ask, "Don't you think that's a little egotistical?"
Well, I suppose there's a fine line between egotism on one hand and creative self expression, zest for life, etc., on the other. I guess I'll just say that I'm generally pretty modest in other areas of my life, so if this site bothers or bores you, you can always just keep on surfin'. Better yet: make your own web page! Go world wide. The thing is, I'm always interested in seeing what motivates other folks and what they've been up to, and I promise I won't think you're just full of yourself.
Anyway, I'm 30-something, a computer professional, a guitar strummer, a rock climber, and more. The big house, fancy car, marriage, kids, and the American Dream have so far all seemed to elude me, but I'm working on it. In the meantime, I have really come to love San Diego and Southern California. Mountains, desert, and ocean. What an excellent place to work and play!
Work
I have worked with computers in one capacity or another for over ten years now. I've done hardware troubleshooting and repair, system and network administration, and programming. I'm currently doing web and database programming, data analysis, and process reengineering as a Programmer/Analyst at UCSD Healthcare with the Division of Family Medicine. I was a 2004-05 Health Sciences Employee of the Year Honoree.
Previously, I worked with D&K Engineering, a software engineering contracting company, as a software development engineer at Phogenix Imaging, a joint venture of HP and Kodak. I programmed in Visual C++ to design a machine control back end and user interface for a new photo processing minilab.
I'm happy to be involved in programming computers to do work that people shouldn't have to do, improving efficiency and ease of use, creating tools to model, automate, and shape human processes, and hopefully making people more satisfied with their jobs. I enjoy the technical, problem-solving aspects and the complex, creative, puzzle-like nature of programming as well as the pragmatic challenge of successful system design.
In what I like to call "my other life," I graduated from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln with a degree in philosophy and literature. My interests included classical Greek philosophy, existentialism, phenomenology, the American pragmatic philosophers, philosophy of science and technology, film theory, linguistics, psychology, and contemporary postmodern philosophy. It was one of the most intellectually and emotionally challenging things I've ever done, and it involved me with some of the most interesting people I've ever met.
Play
One of the most valuable things I've learned from such a mix of personalities as my friends, and from my studies of liberalism and existentialism, is the importance of periodically challenging one's ideas about oneself and exploring new possibilities. This means developing the habit of seeking out and trying new things you would not otherwise think of yourself as ever doing, sometimes despite significant risks or fears. My discovery of an affinity for rock climbing seems to embody every aspect of this principle, and it has become a passion of mine. Over the past seven years, I've climbed up the vertical face of Half Dome at Yosemite, I've done mountaineering in Alaska, and I've bivvied at 13,000 feet on Temple Crag in the Sierra to name just a few of the hundreds of climbs I've enjoyed. In the past, I've also been active in helping to organize local climbing competitions and I've been invited to do competition route-setting for a number of years. I even did a little climbing guiding for awhile. Apart from rock climbing, I also regularly enjoy the benefits of practicing yoga. In fact, for about a year and a half I led a great little Kundalini yoga session, five nights a week, for free, at a Buddhist temple in the neighborhood.
Music, too, has been important to me over the years. I studied the violin when I was a kid. Even though I don't play anymore, I still consider Italian Baroque chamber music to be the peak of musical brilliance. On the other hand, classic jazz by the likes of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, and Sonny Rollins can't be equaled for its sophisticated mellow groove. I also had great fun playing guitar and singing in an indie/folk college band. I still enjoy playing some of my favorites on the guitar.
I also enjoy oil painting. This is one of a series of little paintings I've made, called "Lifeform #1". I find painting in oils to be a very nice meditative, creative outlet. For the originals I've done, I try not to have a clearly preconceived notion of what the finished painting will look like. Instead, because oil can be reworked for many days until it is dry, I evolve the painting toward a finished state peculiarly through feeling, whim, and instinct rather than intellect. Here is a further selection of some of the paintings I've done.
I encourage you to create your own web page! It has become for me a place to express myself and think and write about my involvements, and to communicate what I'm up to with friends, family, and others.