CURRENT MISSION

Sending people to space. For real.

ABOUT ME

A total nerd, and loving every minute of it! grew up in New York, and then moved to Los Angeles to design and build spaceships for SpaceX, which has turned out to be a great choice.

While I'm not working, you can often find me reading, building some gadget, learning a new skill, or trying to overcome my introverted tendencies and meet new people.

PHILOSOPHY

Truth is more important than happiness, but I'm gonna be damn sure to be a person who's happy with whatever I find the truth to be. Now let's go find it!

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I've hosted a few people and couples, and have found it to be a great experience. I'll be doing some traveling soon, and hope to be on the surfing side of things for the first time.

Interests

Knowledge! If I'm learning something, I'm generally happy. Also, I love thrill seeking activities; I'm an avid paraglider, scuba diver, snowboarder, and skier. Some other topics that will get me talking are early retirement, bitcoin, camping, science, and engineering.

When I can get away from the big city for a few days, I love hiking and camping. Just turn off my cellphone, get out into the wilderness, and see the natural world around me.

• design
• reading
• traveling
• hiking
• camping
• surfing
• scuba diving
• skiing
• snowboarding
• paragliding
• engineering
• history
• languages
• science

Music, Movies, and Books

Books: Textbooks compose most of my reading nowadays, but a short list of some of my favorite non-technical books in the order in which they occurred to me: Godel Eschel Bach, the eternal golden braid; Catch-22; Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book; The Running Man; 1984; Neuromancer; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; The Lords of Discipline.

Music: the list is always changing, but as I type this and look at my recently played tab, I find: the Dissociatives, Of Montreal, Muse, Scott Matthew, Elliot Smith, The Hopefuls, Bionic Sheep, Kenji Kawai, The Flaming lips, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Doors...

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Hiked the Inca trail to Machu Picchu. It was amazing not only for the incredible views and the history, but the context. Pretty much every hike I've been on was created so people could have fun hiking. This one, which is the hardest hike I'd ever done and took 3 days, was just how people used to visit the next town over. It cast things in a different light.

Teach, Learn, Share

There's a ton to learn and teach, and I love doing both. Come by and learn from me about any number of scientific fields, and teach me something new.

For those just browsing this page though, a little something to take with you.

I figure there are plenty of couchsurfers trying to learn additional languages. One tool I've found to be very helpful is a flashcard based program called Anki. It's a free and open source program in which you create (or download someone else's) deck of flashcards. The basic idea is, as it asks you to answer the flashcards, you tell it how easily you remembered the answer (or if you didn't at all). The more easily and consistenetly you get a card right, the less often it pops up. This lets you keep decks of thousands of cards without getting overwhelmed, as most only show up every few months by the time you're consistently getting them right. There are a ton of other cool features as well, like sharing an account across mobile devices, and being able to embed pictures, audio, video, equations, and anything else on the flashcards. Check it out at: http://www.ichi2.net/anki/

Countries I’ve Visited

Bolivia, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, Mexico, Peru, Poland, Spain, Ukraine

Countries I’ve Lived In

Israel, United States

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