About Me
(for an explanation of the license plate, go here)
Background
The universe exploded into existence about 14 Billion years ago as an incredibly hot, nearly-uniform glob of stuff. It gradually cooled, and the four fundamental fources of nature (Electromagnetic, Nuclear Weak, Nuclear Strong, and Gravtational) began to separate themselves. For reasons unknown, matter won its feud with antimatter, and bigger chunks of stuff began to appear. Eventually, very light atoms (hydrogen and helium) formed, and pulled together by the forces of gravity, created stars. Within the fusion reactions at the center of these stars, the heavier elements were formed, leading eventually to planets. 5 Billion years ago, the Sun was formed from a giant cloud of crap left over from previously exploded stars, planets and other space-stuff. One planet, Earth, settled itself into an orbit around the sun, which allowed water to exist naturally in all three phases on its surface.
After the planet cooled for a while, photosynthetic prokaryotic organisms formed, converting the sun’s light into energy and producing oxygen as a waste gas. The oxygen released by these organisms eventually became one of the dominant gasses in our atmosphere. The oxygen rich environment, although toxic to more primitive organisms, allowed for the existence of organisms with biological mechanisms such as aerobic respiration. Freed from their dependency upon the sun for energy, these organisms grew and evolved gradually into human beings who initially lived in Africa, and but spread all over the world. A group of these humans, my maternal ancestors, driven largely by a disdain for authority, made their way from Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, to North America starting in the 1600’s. Later, around the early 1800’s, The Neyer family emigrated from Germany to Cincinnati, Ohio, and Northern Kentucky. My parents met each other at Stanford while Pursing Ph.D’s in Classics and Physics.
Education
I was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but when I was 6 months old, the family moved to my Father’s hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, where I grew up. There, I attended St. Xavier High School, widely suspected to be the best high school in the known universe. I graduated from St. Xavier in 2003, winning the Computer Science departmental award. I then attended Xavier University, where I majored in Computer Science, Math, and Applied Physics. I spent summer 2006 at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California, doing research at an NSF REU program. There, I decided that I really enjoyed Computer Science Research and wanted to go to grad school. I also learned to unicycle. I thought I wanted to get a Ph.D., so I attended Computer Science grad school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I graduated with a Masters in Computer Science, in May 2009, with a focus in multicore computing.
Professional
I have held many jobs in my life. I was first employed by my parents to watch my youngest sibling while they ran their math tutoring center. Eventually I was promoted to grading papers and doing flashcards. I worked in food service for four different restaurants over a period of four years. I spent a day working as a contract laborer for a moving company. I ran the IT help desk for AtriCure, a medical device manufacturer. I was paid by the NSF to do research on traffic routing algorithms in optical networks at Harvey Mudd College. I worked on adding features and improving security in a distributed system for solving engineering problems at TechnoSoft, and I fixed bugs in source code management software at Seapine. I designed a tool for measuring Xbox Disc Load times under varying DVD Layouts at Microsoft. I have done consulting work, providing occasional technical support for Hi-Brew Technologies and other companies. Currently, I’m a computer programmer at a financial company called Blue Capital. I work on really cool stuff, but I unfortunately I can’t talk about it.
Music
I have learned to play many musical instruments in my life, almost all of them poorly. I took lessons for piano and trumpet as a child, but never retained much of anything. In high school, I played trumpet, then tuba, french horn and mellophone (sort of like a marching french horn) in the band. I never cared too much for those instruments; it was not easy for me to get excited about playing them.
I’ve always loved metal. When I was 15, I found my father’s old acoustic guitar and started trying to play Metallica songs on it. I’ve been playing off and on, with various levels of intensity, ever since then. Most of what I play is improvised, although occasionally, I will learn to play someone else’s music. I’ve branched out in my musical taste since I was young, although I remain picky. I’ve messed with electronic music in the past, writing songs for the Cincinnati-based techno group Autoshape. I’ve recorded a few songs, which are posted here. Among the artists whose music I like to play are Joe Satriani, Marty Friedman, and the eels. I have the following guitars:
- An entry Level Yamaha Accoustic
- An Ibanez RG4-EX-1 with dual humbucking pickups, a rosewood fretboard with 24 frets and sharktooth inlays, and a locking tremolo.
- A Mid-80’s (not exactly sure the year) Kramer Focus 3000
- Entry Level Fender Strat, modified with Seymour Duncan Pickups
- Washburn bass guitar
- Xbox 360 guitar hero controller.
