I work at the Jet Propulsion Lab so I'm very interested in anything related to space exploration. What Rutan did with SS1 for the X-Prize was very cool. I hope his luck holds for the bigger vehicle with Branson & co.

At home I have a couple of Macintoshes and a Linux box on a LAN that I often experiment with. I'm one of those weirdos who thinks it's fun to play with html, perl, and CGI.

There is also the solar power system that is kinda fun to tinker with. Currently I'm developing an AVR-based monitor for the AC (grid) side of the power system. If the power on the grid side fluctuates, the inverters are required by code to disconnect to prevent "islanding" and protect people who might be working on the line. Trouble is, the power is so bad in our area that we're hit with brownouts or frequency fluctuations sufficient to knock us off the grid several times a month. This doesn't really hurt anything (we don't even know we're disconnected unless we look at the inverter status panel), but it annoys me enough that I'm motivated to try to build a device that can tell me exactly why the inverters disconnected and when. I intend to periodically send the data collected to our power company, Southern California Edison. Not that it'll do any good.

Other hobbies I have are reading (SCIENCE fiction.. the characters and plots should actually be possible in real life. Babylon-5 was good entertainment, but it's basically fantasy, NOT science fiction. Don't even get me started on StarTrek.) Please read the Mundane Manifesto. I think science fiction is much more fun when you realize that it can actually happen.

I'm also interested in anime, again with a SF theme. Inuyasha no. Ghost in the Shell yes. (Though oddly enough I'm more interested in the TV show than the feature movie. Usually I can't stand to watch TV, but this show I tivo.)

I want to hear from you if you do any AVR or embedded work, especially if you do your development work on a Macintosh.