Michael profile picture

Michael

I am here for Friends and Networking

About Me

Primarily, I'm a ColdFusion programmer. Actually, I'm one of the top in the world using that particular language. I know that sounds egotistical, but its rather true. I run the mighty House of Fusion (www.houseoffusion.com) with it's huge mailing lists of ColdFusion and related content. I also publish the Fusion Authority (www.fusionauthority.com), a ColdFusion technical magazine. That's the web version and we're publishing a print quarterly as well (the Fusion Authority Quarterly Update) I co-write books, articles, lecture, teach, and do R&D with the language. Actually, I'm running the next version of the language live at the moment (while digging into it's guts). Other than that, I archive comics, study the more esoteric concepts in Judaism (I'm an orthodox Jew), collect role playing games (for the stories and math), and write tons of code for fun. If you've got any questions in ColdFusion, Comics, or Kabbalah, I'm always willing to talk. That is, when I'm here. I tend to hang mostly on House of Fusion as it has more ColdFusion traffic by far.

My Interests

Math, Roleplaying games (lots of math), comics (I read them ALL), ColdFusion (Guru on call), interesting code, Kabbalah (The Jewish stuff, none of that institute BS), the new and the strange. I actually get paid for most of the above as well as advertising, writing, speaking, training, publishing, consulting and black magic coding. All of which are my interests and all of which are fun. If you have to work, make sure it's with what's interesting.

I'd like to meet:

I'd still like to meet Ostrander and Truman, but I'll give it time. I've talked to them as well as Grell and others in the industry so it should tide me over. Other than that, I don't really have a preference for whom I meet. Each meeting with each person has its own rewards and I let things of that sort 'just happen'.

Music:

My music tastes range from the classical to metal to funk to old school rap (it wasn't old school when I liked it). Music has to have a strong beat, a story or something to grab me or I'll just move on. To name just a few, I like Zappa, Clinton, Prince (pre-1995), and Ozzy. I like 1 song of Linkin Park, 2 of Korn, 1 of SOAD, 3 or 4 of Manson, etc. I'll go through an entire music library and peel off the songs that I like and shuck the rest. Why keep what you don't like?

Movies:

Just saw Pi again and it's one of those true fiction movies. You know that its subject matter (numbers underly reality) is true, but how it gets presented is fiction. Also watched Lucky Number Sleven, support your local sheriff, and Zorro the Gay Blade. All great movies, but it seems that my memory of a segment from Zorro was wrong. Funny segment, but my memory of the scene was funnier. :)

Television:

It's been almost 9 months since I last turned on the TV to actually watch something. If I hear of something good from my friends in the SF industry, I'll download it.

Books:

Just finished reading Headcrash again. Nice old cyberpunk book. I'm probably going to grab American Gods and give that another read. I'm also in the middle of learning Ba'al Haturim (looooon story involving a Chasidic Rabbi and a prohibition against practical 'magic' until I was finished with it).On the tech side, I'm reading the beta docs for Blackstone, mining ebay web services, coder to developer and a book on game theory. Once the mood hits, I have some Java books to read but I just don't like the language much.

Heroes:

Me! Name anyone else who gets paid to read every comic that comes out every week. Actually, I'm a big fan of the RamChal. He definitely has influenced my ordered way of thinking.

My Blog

US Geography quiz

This is a rather cute use of Flash. You get a state and have to drag it into the proper location. If your off, it tells you where it goes and keeps track of how far you've been off total. http://www.s...
Posted by Michael on Mon, 01 Jan 1900 12:00:00 PST

Jean did it

DC has had a rather well written comic series called Identity Crisis running over the past 6 months. The premise is that the wife of a superhero is killed and it looks like a serial killer is doing it...
Posted by Michael on Mon, 01 Jan 1900 12:00:00 PST