About me

I'm a 3rd generation bay area native. Grew up in SSF (the armpit of the peninsula) and fell in love with the bone chilling fog and loud sonic booms. Jobwise, I'm an engineer at a biotech company, where I test equipment and systems they use. Useless degrees include film and geology….

Interests include avoiding media hype, writing music on my MIDI set-up, oil painting landscapes, building furniture, hiking and bike riding, traveling and photography, camping, cooking/eating ethnic foods and films where you have to read the subtitles.

When I was growing up...

I thought Jack Casady from the Jefferson Airplane was the coolest dude. Here was a guy who played bass guitar better than anybody else, had the most awesome looking bass with all those knobs and that pearl inlay, always wore a head band, sunglasses and great tie-dyes, had great long hair, and he never said nothing. He was the coolest dude.

Alan Watts, The Farm and Buddhism

As a kid I listened to Watts' lectures on tape, probably right after he died. In those days you could hear them played on the radio at a decent hour, not 5 AM. I read a couple of his books too, and I'd have to say he was one of the best lecturers I ever heard to this day. He made everything sound so simple. And being as complicated a subject as Zen is, that was really important. Maybe I thought listening to his lectures was a way to defy my catholic upbringing.

Ok, fast forward to when I was in my early 20's and decided to hitchhike across the country. I wind up on The Farm in Tennessee, which is run by this guy Steven Gaskin, who was a San Francisco hippie and brought a group of his followers out there. I'm there for about a month and never get to hear him give his Sunday "sermon" but do get to hear the tapes. I can see he has kind of has a hippie spin on Zen, and begin to realize what the broadness of Buddhism is, and how many ways it can be interpreted. They gave me his book, "Monday Night Class", which I still have.

Fast forward once more to when I'm in my early 30's and I meet a guy who talks about "Tibetan Buddhism", which means Theravada. So finally I'm getting to read the actually teachings of the Buddha, and his story is really remarkable. Here was a guy who explained how the universe works, how you can become enlightened and how you can control your life. As a student of science all my life, I know there are things it can't explain, but the Buddha could. And as a kid with Catholic parents who will never accept anything other than Jesus, the subject of philosophy is arguementative between us at best. Its not the way I wanted it, but its best not to be angry and risk coming back as a lizard.

The only dream I ever remembered

It was halftime at what seemed to be a great game. And great half time entertainment was in store for us. It was to be... a Nuclear Light Show (NLS)! I had never seen one before. They dragged out this huge Rube Goldberg contraption to the center of the field. It had pipes and wires coming out everywhere. Suddenly the sky went dark...the music blared..and laser lights of every color and shape began appearing in all directions. The crowd went wild! Every few minutes, the machine would eject "waste", which looked like big red raviolis. Strange, I thought. They were ejected clear down past the end of the football field.

But what no one knew, was that cattle nearby began eating the waste. They turned into bipedal red aliens that approached the crowd. Everyone went beserk and began running for there lives! Trying to remain calm, I ducked into a nearby music building. It looked like it belonged to the school. I see a circle of closed doors. I heard "Sweet Georgia Brown" coming out of one of the rooms. There is a box for of guitars, so I grab one and tell the guy at the front desk, "Let me jam with those guys". He says in his broken english, "We no tune guitars here". I say, "I'm in tune, I can play". But he doesn't understand me, so I'm left arguing with him while these aliens are hot on my trail.