Friends and Other Interesting People

Unfortunately, many of my closest friends don't yet have web pages.I'm trying to bring them gently into the twentieth century before we cross the threshold of the twenty-first, but as many people in the computer world know, this is far from an easy task. In the meantime, here are the links to a few people who have played a significant role in my life and who have actually made web pages for themselves.

The Gang of Four

Back in my RPI days, a small group of friends spent a lot of time working together on collective stories like Bar-Trek and Ikibomot High School, and also frequently shared transportation and crash space at science fiction conventions. A subset of Apricot Systematic, we referred to ourselves as The Gang of Four. Besides myself, the members were:

• Eric "Scanner" Luce, responsible for spiritual guidance, keeper of Scanner Cinema and the ever-bountiful Coke fridge.
• Ed "Zed" Lopez, bibliophile, aerobicist and vegetarian, and my favorite philosphical debating partner. This man actually survived a year and a half in Los Angeles and even managed to earn a master's degree in the process.
• John "Pomru" Yung, artist extraordinaire, anime and comic book expert, and always willing to volunteer as a "Pomru Navigation Unit" (PNU) on road trips.

Other Friends

• Mitch Gold, probably the first friend I made at RPI. He cheered me up when I was having a really bad day during my first month at school, and that's the sort of thing I never forget. He has always been a good guy to know. Currently in Florida, but still occasionally makes it up north.
• George Walters, bozo from RPI and now a fellow New Jersey resident, just your basic all-American, somewhat insane guy.
• Mark Taranto, one of the instigators of the "Inner Clique" on rec.arts.books back in 1992 and '93, when we both actually had time to participate in Usenet. Mark lived in New York City when I was in Troy, and shortly after I moved down to the New York area, he moved away, the traitor. Mark recently obtained an MBA from Duke University, and was last seen headed for UC Berkeley, hot on the trail of a Ph.D.
• Jeff Jankowski, the Capital District's premier bicyclist, party host, and blues connosieur, proprietor of the famous (or notorious) 11th Street Hotel. Jeff is a fellow beer lover and helped me to compose the Beer Bill of Rights.
• Atul Jagga, a good friend of mine from Troy, doesn't have a personal web site, but he does have one for Squonk, the ISP that he founded in 1995.

Organizations

Computers and the Internet have been a very useful social tool for me, and I've made many new friends and acquaintances through the computer-related organizations of which I've been a member. The web sites of these groups will contain links to other interesting people whose paths I've crossed in the past few years, in addition to much useful information in their own right.

• The RPI-ACM, a chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Joining this group helped to steer my life in the direction it's currently taken, and it was a major influence on my life during my years in Troy.
• Apricot Systematic, an informal but very active collection of individuals dedicated to exploring the potential of computers for communication, and also having a good time going to science fiction conventions, watching anime, and drinking Coca-Cola.

If you're not on this list and think that you should be, feel free to e-mail me and threaten dire vengeance if you're not added.