To the NBA stuff

To the Mavs stuff

This page contains other non-basketball stuff I had laying around and a little bit of info about me. As seen by my basketball pages, I'm a _huge_ NBA fan (and a pure NBA fan - I don't watch college or women's ball). However, I do have a number of other interests.

• Who I am: I'm a 35 year old computer programmer living in the Dallas area (Allen to be exact). I was born in San Jose, California and moved to the Dallas area (Richardson) when I was 7. I went away to college in Massachusetts and graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1992 where I majored in Computer Science (great school, but I wouldn't want to spend my life in New England). I spent 1 year post-school in Mass before moving to Austin for 2 years (where I put a ton of miles on my car driving to Dallas almost every other weekend during the basketball season). I've been back in Dallas since May, 1995. BTW, the 'net is not a new thing for me. I've been online since 1989. I started doing the NBA daily news reports in the summer of 1993 and my Mavs reports during the fall of 1993 and created my basketball web sites in the fall of 1995.
• Hikes - this is an incomplete document that I occasionally get around to adding to (and sometimes completely ignore). After basketball, day hiking is my 2nd love. I'm big into day hikes. Except for the summer (too hot), I tend to go on hikes once or twice a month and I plan a lot of hiking on my vacations. As a hint for those who like hiking: the best conditioning for hiking I've found is to do the treadmill at a comfortable walk at a 15% grade. The stairmaster does _not_ hit the right muscles for elevation hiking.
• 2003 Alps trip report - my trip report from my 2 weeks in southern Germany, Austria, and Switzerland
• 2001 Hawaii trip report - I tend to do trips in a big way. I don't sit around on my vacations. This is my trip report for my 2001 summer trip to Hawaii. [If you are interested in hearing about more of my trips (I only did write ups for these 3 trips), take a look at my hiking page where I've described all the hikes I went on during my trips.]
• 1999 California trip report - my trip report for my 1999 summer trip to northern California to see the redwoods and beaches.
• 1998 Hawaii trip report - my trip report from my awesome September, 1998 trip to Hawaii.
• I read a lot (often while on the treadmill - it surprisingly doesn't give me motion sickness). Horror/suspense is my favorite genre (_not_ splatter-gore), but I occasionally read others. I will instantly snatch up anything by Peter Straub (horror) and Dan Simmons (horror and science fiction). I found Thomas Perry (suspense) several years ago and have since read all of his books at least twice (_Metzeger's Dog_ was great). I advance purchase hardback for all 3. I've enjoyed books by Andrew Klavan (I'm still amazed that the car chase in _True Crime_ was far more exciting in the book than in the movie [and, as usual, the book was bounds better]) and Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston (_The Relic_ was awesome). I also enjoy most of T. Jefferson Parker's, Greg Iles', Robert Crais', F. Paul Wilson's, and a number of other writer's books. Lee Child's tough-guy books are my guilty pleasure. I still read Jonathan Kellerman, but he's getting too formulamatic for my taste and don't rush out to buy his books [I'll pick up a new one when I see it it at Half-Price Books, but I don't rush to read it] and I also have a tendency to pick up Steven White's similar style books. I finally gave up on Dean Koontz many years ago, but _Lightning_ remains my all time favorite book. Oh, and nothing brightens a day like picking up an old Bloom County book.
• I'd do a movie list, but there'd be far too many to list. My movie tastes run the gambit - from Lethal Weapon 2 (my favorite) to Star Wars to Dr. Strangelove to While You Where Sleeping to LA Confidential to Out of Sight to Desperado to Grosse Point Blank to Terminator 2 to The Great Escape to Die Hard to The Princess Bride to The Magnificent Seven to Dead Again to The Mouse That Roared to Raiders of the Lost Ark to Lawrence of Arabia to ...
• For someone who spent most of her childhood watching TV, I don't watch any regular TV shows anymore - I stoped watching the last couple during 2003. I do have all of Magnum PI, Wiseguy, American Gothic, and China Beach on tape. If the TV is on in my apartment, 90% of the time it will be on ESPN or basketball.
• Wow! I Didn't Know You Could Do That In vi - yep, I'm a unix person and vi is my editor. I compiled this file a number of years ago at work.
• 286 modem - a little funny experience from 1999 when I tried to find a modem for my old 286 (I miss that computer - and would still be using it if it hadn't finally bit the dust in 2000).