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POSTED
2020-04-15
UPDATED
2024-11-12
EDIT
REPORT
07-081940
08-47148
09-081966
10-31
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Headshot Crest

Something, something, perfect enemy of the good.

I'm Arthur. This is my website. In early 2020, I threw together a basic structure using GitHub Pages (because tech geek) to get something off the ground quickly. And, with gratitude to Jim Robertus, in late 2021, I finally did a first-pass / naive adaptation of his LCARS template to my website.

I have about a million and one things I'm passionate about that I want to get out of my brain and onto proverbial paper.

Some of it is about me personally and my own history, experiences, and growth. Some of it is observations about the world, social and interpersonal dynamics, philosophy, psychology, and other not-about-me-directly things like TV, product design, and project management. Some content is in style of date-specific blog posts, and some content is captured in "timeless", "living" posts...I haven't written any of the latter yet, but I have created a ton of stubs to give an indication of what I want to write about (and there are a ton more I haven't created stubs for yet, too).

Frankly, a huge motive for me here is to create what amounts to an "Arthur wiki" or "Arthur user's guide". Whether you want to get to know me or you're just interested in my thoughts... Buckle up.

On This Page

Recently Added Content

Stubs written or modified in the last 21 days.

Voting

Stubbed on 2024-10-31 (last updated on 2023-11-30)

There's a lot of rhetoric in our culture about the importance of voting. Is it really important?

Good versus Evil

Stubbed on 2021-04-15 (last updated on 2024-11-17)

Why are we so attracted to the idea of "good versus evil"? How is it helpful, and where do we need to be more careful?

Paleo

Stubbed on 2020-05-08 (last updated on 2024-11-18)

While often derided as "the caveman diet", I think the right approach to evaluating Paleo is in thinking of it as a presumptively safe default.

Status

Here's a quick update about what's going on with me right now, current as of 2024-11-11. You can also read through my status history.

The good:

  • I got to attend my sister Elizabeth's medical school graduation in May.
  • I had a great time at LevelUp 2024 in Atlanta in June, where I led a session on the value of mindfulness meditation.
  • I attended my paternal grandmother's 90th birthday and Elizabeth's 25th birthday celebrations in LA at the end of June and in early July.
  • I had a blast in Po'ipu, Kaua'i, Hawai'i to celebrate my 40th birthday for two weeks in July with Chase, Chad, Vicki, Christopher, Morten, Ann, Olivia, and a surprise attendance by my dad!
  • Brit and I hit a major milestone in our project.
  • I wrapped up my employment at Ookla and started working for RP Strength (Renaissance Periodization) as Head of Product for Diet.
  • I attended my sister Jacqueline's baby shower in September.
  • Chase and I went to Avatar: The Last Airbender in Concert for his 28th birthday, and it was so amazing that there was scarcely a dry eye in the audience, least of all ours.
  • We welcomed a new member to the Wolfden, Thor, a 4-month-old yellow labrador retriever. He's a very fast learner and a very good boy who gives Max all the terrorism that he deserves!
  • Murrby started spending nights in the main part of the ADU (our apartment / in-law suite).
  • Aaron Bilger and Kelly Elmore came over for dinner in early October, and it was nice to reconnect with them.
  • Chase's dad came to visit, and we went rock climbing at Staunton.
  • I attended a grandkids luncheon for our grandmother Bella in LA in mid-October.
  • After 7 months of the parts' sitting in the garage, Chase and I finally installed the ceiling rails in the garage for the storage totes and reorganized our living space to be less cramped.
  • I successfully finished a modest cut and got my ab veins back.
  • I got to help the program that was providing Chase with his Single-Pitch Instructor climbing certification by acting as a mock client on their examination day (and I had a great time climbing and learning a few new things). Chase passed his exam!
  • I had a blast at Charcon 6.0, where I presented my talk, Meditation: Who Needs It (which went pretty well), and where James Ellias's presentation on induction was the highlight of the formal talks. I enjoyed spending time with Christopher, James, Daniel, Laurin & David, and Doms & Lex in the Airbnb we shared, reconnecting more with Kelly Elmore, and getting to know Carrie-Ann Biondi better. Seeing long-time friends and making new ones was great, and I also got to see Nick Shaw and Sherri Beckman while I was in Charlotte.

The bad:

  • A severe lightning storm in June knocked out power, fried some electronics/circuits, and damaged some well pump components, and in trying to diagnose the problem, I made it worse and ended up requiring the services of a professional (and then he figured out that the actual problem was something I could have even fixed with parts and tools I already had on hand).
  • We're still struggling with the plumbing in the main house.
  • We're still struggling with some of the electrical wiring and issues in the ADU.
  • Max is still struggling with some fear and behavioral issues.
  • I'm still struggling with irritability and feeling overwhelmed, especially with being patient with Max. Probably relatedly, I'm struggling with my sex drive.

The ugly: I'm pleased to report that nothing seems "ugly"...overall, things are pretty good and on an upward trajectory.

Elevator Pitch

I'm a logic-emotions monist, open (almost to a fault), wholehearted, wild, untamed, and disciplined in mind and action. (I wrote a decent stub on Family Arguing that proposes a causality for how I came to be this way.)

I tend to be a generalist and selective specialist, but a huge nerd through and through. I'm a die-hard advocate of induction as the primary mode of human cognition. My superpowers include seeing patterns and untangling nuanced differences. I'm especially good at seeing underlying principles, whether in human behavior or API design, as well as finding general, future-proof solutions to seemingly disparate problems. If you're interested, check out my Personality and Behavioral Profiles.

To me, integrity means integrating mind, body, and spirit. It means continuously learning rational (ie, practical) principles, and walking the walk and talking the talk. I embrace consistency and reject compartmentalization. I'm a geek about intellectual pursuits, I'm maniacal about physical fitness (in health, bodybuilding, and diet), and I'm always learning and growing in the areas of mindfulness and empathy (thank you, meditation).

I'm opinionated and curious, willful and flexible, arrogant and aware of my limitations, direct and sensitive/tactful (or, well, I try!). I always have to be right, not necessarily appear right or merely "win" arguments. I worship at the altar of the supreme sanctity of the truth; discovering that I was wrong is a gift that allows me to learn the truth and actually be right. I'm utterly intransigent about certain things (especially more fundamental matters of principle), but really easygoing about a lot of more superficial things. This seems to create a lot of confusion for people, and most people erroneously conclude that I'm just uptight and inflexible. I'm okay with being not understood, but I really struggle with (and get defensive about) being misunderstood.

I love logging things in the spirit of Quantified Self, though it's not an especially social phenomenon for me. Part of my love of it is in bringing order to the chaos of life through data normalization.

What is "The Truth about the Dishwasher"? You'll have to wait until I write about it...

While I buck a lot of social conventions and many of the superficial manifestations of my traits are baffling to a lot of people (believe me, I will write plenty on this), if you really get me, if you really see and understand the core of my being, I am super predictable.

I love children, and I can't wait to be a dad. Meanwhile, doggo Max is my trusty companion.

I grew up in Los Angeles, I lived in the San Francisco Bay area for nearly 10 years, I was in Denver "temporarily" for about a year to figure out whether I want to live in Colorado permanently, and I've been living in Bailey, Colorado since the end of August 2021.

Oh, and I'm the product manager for Speedtest Powered at Ookla, where I build technical products for technical customers.

Interests, Values, and Passions

Previous Sports

Random Tidbits

  • I'm a homebody. The chances of my initiating going out to eat, to a bar, or to a club are extremely slim. Dark, loud, and/or crowded? No, thanks. My perfect Friday or Saturday night involves going to bed early. But I love daytime activities, especially outdoors, and I respond well to invitations to participate in them!
  • I'm a creature of habit; I love my routines and comforts.
  • I hate wearing clothes. Specifically, I love being shirtless. It's a manifestation of my extreme vanity. (More on that controversial topic later!)
  • I think glasses are incredible sexy/adorkable. I desperately wanted glasses when I was a kid, and I never understood any of the cultural norms around their being undesirable (like "four eyes, four eyes" taunting). I thought they were super cool, and even if I didn't need vision correction, they felt like a mark of being intellectual. There's more to say about all this, but now I wear glasses that offer mild vision correction, but I'd wear them regardless, just because I like the way I look in them.
  • If I'm not actually barefoot, just nipping out on a quick errand in flipflops, or wearing snow/snowboarding boots, I wear Vibrams. I've been wearing them since 2011 for everything including work, gym, running, hiking/backpacking, and even formal events demanding a suit... I clearly don't wear them for the "fashion"; I find them comfortable, I think they're good for me physiologically, and I'm so allergic to wearing foot coffins (or dressing in general) just to accommodate others' expectations.
  • I've been eating strict Paleo (with various modifications and refinements) since 2009. No cheating.
  • I'm a compulsive nail-biter and "investigator" of my dermatological phenomena, which is apparently called "dermatillomania" or "excoriation disorder". (These are things I struggle with a lot.)
  • I'm a horrible procrastinator. I often struggle to muster up the will to invest effort into tasks that would take 5-15 minutes to complete, so instead, they hang over my head for weeks or months, creating a ton of background stress. I find myself wondering whether this is a function of being extremely susceptible to cognitive inertia and the flip side of why being in a state of flow is such a powerful, productive experience for me. I think this is also related to why it's so important for me to set up daily/weekly routines, especially to handle administrative "adulting" tasks.
  • I'm extremely risk-averse, definitely to a fault and in a very anxiety-provoking way. This is a disposition I really need to keep in check.
  • I'm extremely conflict-averse, which people often find surprising, and which sometimes manifests as being too accommodating and encouraging being taken advantage of. But on matters of principle, I absolutely do not shy away from defending my values.
  • I'm not as extroverted as I might seem. Indeed, I think I'm actually a severe introvert who just manifests extroverted behaviors because I find ideas energizing, but I find people (the vehicle for exchanging, discussing, and engaging in ideas) utterly exhausting.
  • Growing up, I felt like I could often relate to adults better than my age-wise peers. I felt very comfortable socializing with them (though, in retrospect, I'm sure the feeling wasn't symmetric).
  • I was obsessed with long hair as a kid and had a sort of pony tail (it was more of a poof) at various stages in my life up to about 16 years old. (Before I cut it off for good, when the hair was wet, it would go down to the middle of my back.)
  • As a kid, I hated getting dirty. I didn't like playing in puddles or mud. I loved bathing. It's probably related to my attitudes about hygiene and cleanliness today, including perhaps my tactile aversion to stickiness and dust/chalk, my dislike of slimy foods, and paranoia about STDs. I literally and figuratively colored inside the lines (and still do).
  • I'm extremely materialistic in that I attach high sentimental value to things most people would regard as unimportant--so I can't throw anything away. I think this is because "things" help to ground me in physical reality and provide an anchor for my memory, which feels fragile and fallible. I love my memorabilia; almost everything "sparks joy" (shove it, Marie Kondo!). But with the exception of groceries and occasional tech splurges, I'm pretty darned frugal by nature. (Also, already having way too many things helps create an incentive against acquiring even more things!)
  • I love the beach and the ocean, and while I don't pursue them often enough, I enjoy all manners of water sports and being on various water crafts.
  • I enjoy camping and hiking (after all, I'm an Eagle Scout), but I rarely initiate it, instead enthusiastically participating when others organize trips. (I wonder why that is...and how much of it might be more that I just like to think that I'm the kind of person who likes camping, considering how much I actually really like to stay clean and love my routines and creature comforts.)
  • I hate traveling by plane, but I love the phenomenon of flying. I love window seats so that I can be filled with amazement at how we're in a metal can hurtling through the sky at incredible speeds and marvel at what human ingenuity can achieve. But the whole end-to-end process of commercial flying is super stressful, from booking air travel, to packing lightly enough, to getting to airports on time, to TSA security theatre, to numerous travel modality switching (car, walking, flying, walking, car), to sitting in claustrophobia-inducing uncomfortable seats that are not suited for someone who is 6'2". It means that if it's within an hour or two difference (eg, SF to LA), I'd much rather drive, even though driving is also super stressful for me (especially because of paranoia of getting speeding citations).
  • I've never gone on vacation by myself. (I only first started snowboarding by myself in the 2020-2021 season, once day trips became practical for me.) If I take vacation time on my own, I'd much rather be frugal and stay at home, relaxing.
  • Despite enjoying cooking (especially with others), I am not culinarily adventurous. Aside from the influence of my risk aversion and dislike of slimy things / weird textures, I have a lot of psychological hangups about certain food categories (eg, all seafood, the smell and idea of which I have strongly associated with rotting marine life in tide pools). I don't like exploring new foods, and I'm very happy to just eat the same boring thing, day in and day out. (This makes designing and adherence to meal plans for my fitness goals really easy!) See also my post on Paleo.
  • I love spicy foods, and I joke that I have burned off all the capsaicin receptors in my mouth already.
  • Listening to music is a very active process for me (meaning humming or singing along), so it's really hard for me to ever have it on in the background. It also means I don't much care for intentional music discovery (like Pandora). Invite me to the symphony, opera, or ballet if you're prepared to be hitting me every 5 seconds to stop me from signing along.
  • I've never been to a music performance that didn't involve sitting in seats, but I do like quite a bit of contemporary music.
  • I don't dance. Well, that's not true: I'm very comfortable learning dancing styles that have predefined moves that I might recombine on the fly to music (eg, swing, salsa, tango), and I've taken a few classes here and there. I tend to pick that up pretty well, but I'm not especially skilled. What I don't do is the random move-your-body-to-the-beat kind of dancing that's typical at clubs, weddings, etc. It's not that I'm inhibited in that regard; it's just not me. I feel stupid doing it, even though I don't think anybody else looks stupid doing it, and I know I don't look stupid to anybody else. I wouldn't do it in private, either...that also feels really uncomfortable. I used to be embarrassed about that and wished I could fit in, but nowadays, I'm way more comfortable just not participating, despite everybody else's attempts to talk me into dancing (which I think amounts to an unintentional attempt to shame me into it). Nope. Not me. Thanks!
  • I'm a really fast runner, faster than anybody I've met in person (to the extent I've tested that). I'm also a sprinter, not an endurance runner (even though I have no problem snowboarding continuously for over 7 hours, resting only while riding the chairlift). I bet it's related to my being able to jump really high, too.
  • I have a fear of falling from heights. Falling in general is no problem. No problem with chairlifts without the safety bar or flying in planes. But if I feel insecure or that there's a significant risk of falling from a height, it definitely triggers a panic response. I've had recurring nightmares as a kid about falling from cliffs. My heartrate increases dramatically when watching those videos of people prancing around on construction beams.
  • In the 2004-2005 ski season, while driving up to Big Bear from LA at night, I was driving too fast and missed a curve in the mountain road. Had it not been for a turnout coincidentally being there, I would have driven off the side of the cliff to my death.
  • In 2014, I broke my right 4th metacarpal playing ultimate frisbee...I jumped to block the opposing team from catching the disc, and it hit the back of my hand in exactly the wrong way. I now have two screws in my right hand.
  • According to my dad, I was born left-handed, and my parents (re)trained me to be right-handed. I don't remember there being anything tumultuous about it; it's not like they "beat" it out of me. It was a totally no-big-deal thing, like "Oh, you're supposed to do this with your right hand.". I joke that their suppression of my left-handedness caused me to "act out" in other ways, like being gay. But in all seriousness, I wonder whether that explains some of my better-than-average ambidexterity. Or further, whether it's related to better left-right brain cooperation that could be the physical manifestation of my emotions-logic monism.
  • I scrupulously avoid reading any news except tech news. I'm blissfully and self-righteously ignorant of current events. I find that most news disproportionately reports on the sensationalistic negative stuff going on around the world, perhaps catering to a sort of schadenfreude. Aside from finding that distasteful on philosophical grounds, I think it misrepresents the proportion of bad and good in the world and skews our perception of how good life is. There is so much good and wonderfulness in the world; I'd rather focus on that. And I'd much rather risk having a disproportionately positive view of the world than negative. Moreover, I have close to 0% control over nearly 100% of the negative stuff reported in "the news", and there's very little I can do differently on the basis of "being informed"; so what's the point? Yes, sure, I can fight for cultural change in the long term, but being informed of broad trends and certain major current events is inescapable, no matter how well I avoid explicitly pursuing "the news"; I don't need to be inundated with negativity to have a motive to live a good life and work to improve the world (if anything, that negativity would sap my energy to do so).
  • I'm also fairly ignorant of history (which is actually a shame). If anything, I tend to know more about historical trends and periods than the "who's who" of history.
  • I know very little about pop culture or spectator sports, neither of which I have much patience for. The most I might know is a little about actors in my favorite shows/movies and sports I've actually played.
  • As a kid, I was obsessed with magic. I don't honestly know how much I really believed it was real, but I desperately wanted it to be real and to have magical powers. (No surprise, then, how obsessed I became with Star Trek's Q, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, and Aladdin's Jafar, among others.) When I was much younger, the only thing I ever asked for for Christmas was a magic wand. Every blowing-out-the-birthday-candles wish was also for a magic wand...which, in later years, turned into "infinite control over time, space, and matter". I continue to have a very active imagination around exercising potential magical powers, including plenty of rumination/daydreaming about a related topic, what I would do with my one superpower, if I could choose only one. And all this is certainly related to the kinds of TV shows I tend to like.
  • My favorite movie is The Time Traveler's Wife.
  • 1 out of 10 Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes makes me cry. My favorites are Who Watches the Watchers and The Offspring. I'll let you make your own inferences about how much I cry during other TV shows and movies.
  • My favorite fiction book is Atlas Shrugged. The His Dark Materials trilogy is a close second because fuck authority.
  • I have a lot of favorites. I like things how I like them. It's probably a manifestation of how much I care about things in general.
  • I ran a philosophy club at UCLA called LOGIC for about 7 years between 2004 and 2011. I took it extremely seriously and organized it as a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation. We put on some very high-profile and well-attended events.
  • Some of my closest friends are from middle school.
  • The most consistent and frequent trigger of my anger is bad UX on mobile apps and websites and poor/inefficient customer service.
  • Swords and knives violently cutting flesh in TV and movies? No problem. Needles and scalpels? Slow torture involving mutilation? I often can't look, and when I do, I'm at extreme risk of passing out. Getting my blood drawn can easily trigger a vasovagal response, but I have no problem making myself bleed using sharp tweezers on my own skin to "address" dermatological phenomena.
  • I dropped out of high school. (Okay...I say that for dramatic effect. I tested out after 10th grade because I ran out of AP math and science classes...kind of.)
  • Technically, Russian is my first language, and my parents forced me to go to Russian School on Saturdays for 11 years (maybe here?)...unsurprisingly, with my willful personality, I didn't get much out of it. I took French in high school and college. I took one quarter of Italian at UCLA.
  • I studied piano pretty seriously between the ages of 7 and 18 (now I just dabble), I played flute in grades 6 and 7, and I was in choir in grades 7 through 10.
  • I'm an Eagle Scout.
  • I graduated from law school and even passed the CA Bar Exam.
  • Brené Brown "speed round" / "rapid fire" from Unlocking Us:
    • Vulnerability is
      honesty to yourself.
    • You're called to do something brave, but your fear is real. What's the very first thing you do?
      breathe
    • Something that people often get wrong about you is
      that I like arguing, just because I'm willing to defend my beliefs.
    • Last show that you watched, binged, and loved:
      as of April 2020, The Magicians
    • Favorite movie:
      The Time Traveler's Wife
    • A concert that you'll never forget:
      While at university, I got access to discounted student tickets to the LA Opera to see Mozart's The Magic Flute. We got seats 4 rows from the stage, and my friends had to keep hitting me to stop singing along, since I had been listening to all the songs on repeat for a week leading up to it.
    • Favorite meal:
      ribeye steak, with a side of french fries cooked in beef tallow, a gigantic salad, and a glass of Malbec
    • What's on your nightstand right now?
      on 2020-04-26: Phillip Pullman's Once Upon a Time in the North, my mala beads, my (non-military) dogtags, a few Pixel phones, an empty glass (for water), and a some folded clothes
    • A snapshot of an ordinary moment in your life that brings you joy:
      snuggling with Billy
    • What are you deeply grateful for right now?
      my friends who truly see and understand me
  • If I were Maeve from Westworld, able to modify my "Attribute Matrix" on a tablet, here's what I would select (on a scale of 0-20):
    • bulk apperception: 20
    • candor: 20
    • vivacity: 20
    • coordination: 20
    • meekness: 0
    • humility: 0
    • cruelty: 0
    • self-preservation: 20
    • patience: 10
      Not really sure about this one... In some manifestations, impatience is a really good thing, insofar as it prompts doing something about an unacceptable situation, reflecting intense value commitments. In other manifestations, patience amounts to resilience and skill in being able to deal with a situation more coolly, calmly, rationally, and soberly.
    • decisiveness: 20
    • imagination: 20
    • curiosity: 20
    • aggression: 20
    • loyalty: 20
      This is provisional, since it depends on what you mean by "loyalty": loyalty to facts? loyalty to a person? being truly supportive by being willing to challenge a person and act in accordance with their long-term interests, even if unpleasant or uncomfortable in the immediate term? superficial agreement with / enablement of anything they say or do?
    • empathy: 20
    • tenacity: 20
    • courage: 20
    • sensuality: 20
    • charm: 20
    • humor: 20

Valuable Resources

These are ideas and approaches to various areas of life that I have derived great value from...with some indication of my own viewpoints sprinkled in.

Physical Well-Being

Psychological and Emotional Well-Being

Parenting and Education

A parent's job is to be a guide in a child's development into an adult. A parent is a model, not an authority figure. A child must learn, not obey. A parent should not try to tame their child or desire obedience, but to help the child cultivate the skills of agency, self-determination, self-regulation, independent judgment, internal motivation, and efficacy. "Punishment", ranging from grounding to stonewalling to physical striking, are not effective tools; they teach a child that these are normal modes of interaction between human beings and handicap their future adult relationships. Punishment and "consequences" create power struggles and undermine the possibility of finding win-win solutions. While I wouldn't say it's always wrong to characterize a child as "misbehaving", the more useful framing is to understand that the child is attempting to achieve a value, perhaps ineffectively, and that it's the parent's job to help the child learn more effective ways of achieving values. Regardless, approaching a child with anger or phrases such as "You're bad." and "You're being bad." (which a child is likely to internalize as a matter of basic identity) are disastrous.

Management

Philosophy: Objectivism

Philosophy: Who Needs It

Your subconscious is like a computer--more complex a computer than men can build--and its main function is the integration of your ideas. Who programs it? Your conscious mind. If you default, if you don't reach any firm convictions, your subconscious is programmed by chance--and you deliver yourself into the power of ideas you do not know you have accepted. But one way or the other, your computer gives you print-outs, daily and hourly, in the form of emotions--which are lightning-like estimates of the things around you, calculated according to your values. If you programmed your computer by conscious thinking, you know the nature of your values and emotions. If you didn't, you don't.

Okay, so I feel like I need to offer a fair bit of clarification on this, since I think terms like "selfishness" and "capitalism" can be readily polarizing and misunderstood, given widespread (mis)use in our culture. I'll do more of that clarification in a post at some point. For now, here's a summary of my viewpoints, which I credit to Objectivism and Ayn Rand.

  • metaphysics: absolute reality
    Facts are what they are. Our mere fact of believing or wishing does not change them.
  • epistemology: knowledge through induction
    Concepts are inductive generalizations of observations of concrete entities given in perception, as well as of other concepts. Bona fide knowledge and certainty is always contextual; new discoveries and understanding does not inherently overturn previous knowledge, but in a proper progression, builds on and expands it.
  • ethics: egoism
    The moral purpose of my life is my own happiness, prosperity, and joy, not the mere satisfaction of momentary hedonistic whims or pleasures. Sterilely, the purpose of my relationships with other people is to serve my own well-being, but I experience others as a tremendous potential or actual value to my life, and therefore, emotionally, as ends in themselves. I seek out win-win relationships. I believe people's true interests are harmonious, so there are no win-lose relationships; anything purported to be a win-lose relationship is really a lose-lose relationship. I reject the glorification of sacrifice and suffering. More concretely, the egoistic virtues I embrace are rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, and pride.
    • Tara Smith: Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist: Kindle
  • politics: (laissez-faire) capitalism
    The concept of "individual rights" identifies the factual requirements of human flourishing in a social context; the concept identifies the actions that are permissible and prohibited in a society if we want to create the conditions that enable prosperity. Negatively put, the initiation of physical force (including fraud) and its threat are prohibited. Positively put, people may act on their own independent judgment with respect to their own person and property, provided they do not interfere with others' ability to do the same. This amounts to freedom and what it means to live in a free society (we are not very close to that at present).
  • aesthetics: romantic realism
    The purpose of art is to provide spiritual fuel and to directly evoke emotions in a way that may bypass explicit conceptual awareness.

Crest

Crest

More to come on this... But for now, major hat tip to Melissa Cade, who painstakingly implemented and iterated on the design with me!

symbol meaning
wolf wildness, freedom, instinctiveness, control, playfulness, curiosity, intelligence, nobility, loyalty, guardianship, sexual ferocity, aggressiveness, ritual
triquetra integration of mind, body, and spirit; love of magic (via Charmed)
triquetra heart modification whole-heartedness
lyre music
dragons Arthurian legend; power, magic, wisdom, strength, untamed nature, clarity of purpose, guarding material wealth
fire passion, intensity
lotus (pursuit of) enlightenment, growth, perseverance over pain and difficulty
rowing oars discipline, dedication
barbell weightlifting, narcissism
Starfleet emblem love of Star Trek, optimism, technology
Front Range crown love of the mountains and Colorado, firmness, stillness
sun love of heat, energy, clarity, confidence, goodness, peace
wave love of the ocean, change, flow, serenity and turbulence
snowflake love of the snow and snowboarding, uniqueness
flux capacitor love of Back to the Future, time travel, four-dimensional / abstract thinking
The One Ring power, magic
Earth point of origin love of Stargate, exploration
crown symbol orientation geekiness and nerdom on wolf's right brain and nature on wolf's left brain, inverting the traditional left-right brain dichotomy to represent integration of intellect and emotion

Timeline

Bear with me here...eventually, I want to make this table autogenerated in JavaScript from JSON data files that contain not only these "big ticket" items, but also more granular time-based data points, like location checkins, exercise logs, food diary, media consumption, etc! For now, it's just a plain table to communicate some basic information about stuff in my life.

Year Location School Work Love Miscellaneous
1984 West Hollywood, CA
1985
1986
1987 Sister Jacqueline is born
1988 St Thomas the Apostle Preschool
1989 Parents legally changed my name from
Arthur Igor Zey
to
Arthur Igor Lechtholz-Zey
Temple Israel Kindergarten
1990 Brother Andrew is born
Brentwood Science Magnet
Elementary School
1991
1992
1993 Caroline (one-sided)
1994
1995
Walter Reed Middle School Self-employed Tech Consulting
1996
1997
Brentwood, CA
1998
Palisades High School
1999 Sister Elizabeth is born
2000
Santa Monica College
2001 Duckett-Wilson Development Company
2002
UCLA
Rieber 5 South		 UCLA Undergrad
Math of Computation BSc
2003 Nick
UCLA
Hedrick 7 North
2004 Drew
Mar Vista, CA "Wyatt" (protecting his privacy)
2005 Parents get divorced
UCLA School of Law
2006 Acquire step-family (Masha, Emily, Michael)
Westwood, CA Ayn Rand Institute
2007
Sara
2008
Brentwood, CA
2009
2010 AZEY Design
Santa Monica, CA Legally changed my name from
Arthur Igor Lechtholz-Zey
to
Arthur Zey
Mountain View, CA CDNetworks
2011
2012
Delphi
2013 CDNetworks
Twitter
San Francisco, CA
2014
2015
Daly City, CA
Autodesk
2016 Sam
2017
Amazon:
Alexa Core Services
2018 Adam
San Francisco, CA
2019
Amazon:
Alexa Tech Docs
2020
Denver, CO
2021 Amazon:
Alexa Voice Service Device SDK
Bailey, CO Bought my first home!
Ookla: Speedtest Powered
2022 Chase Welcomed Max into my life!
2023 Welcomed Murrby into my life
2024 Welcomed Thor to the Wolfden!
RP Strength (Renaissance Periodization)