About Me
Product Manager: I specialize in defining products and being the bridge between what customers need and what developers can deliver. The ability to listen, not just to what is said but what is meant, is critical. But also, a product manager has to educate, explaining to engineers why something is needed so that they can meet or exceed customer expectations, as well as presenting the innovations of the engineers to the customers to solve their problems.
Roleplayer and Board gamer: I am not much into computer games for the simple reason that I lack the skill and patience. Face-to-face rpgs are my primary creative outlet; I approach it like improvisational theater, except that you keep the same persona over many hours at a stretch. Rather than be randomly generated, the scenes are strung together to form a cohesive story. I enjoy the acting element, immersing myself in a character, more so than the “let’s tell a story” aspect, but I do need a decent plot line to hang my character on.
Introvert: The most exhausting thing for me to do is to be at a party. How talkative and socially engaging I am is inversely proportional to the number of people there. Unless I’m giving a lecture or teaching a class, then that’s different.
Atheist: There was a time when no one believed neutrinos existed. There simply was no reason to suspect they did. But as our knowledge of how the universe works increased, it became evident that there might be something there. Hypothesis were made and experiments were done. Eventually, the existence of neutrinos was proven (even if we still don’t know exactly how much mass they have). Now we know. It is not matter of faith, but established fact based on the trust I put in the countless scientists who have proven over and over again that neutrinos exist. Once you can do that with [fill in your favorite piece of mysticism here], then I’ll stop being an atheist.