About

dē mēmetipsō / περὶ ἐμαυτοῦ

Hello there, and thank you for stopping by! I really enjoy computers, music, reading, movies, languages, and learning of all kinds.

I spent most of my academic career studying to be a classicist (scholar of Latin, Greek, and the ancient Mediterranean world), and earned my Ph.D. in Classical Studies in 2014. My B.A. and M.A. are both in Classics as well, but I almost pursued a career in computer science, my original major. I couldn’t figure out the math, especially discrete math, and found I was way better at ancient languages overall. Yet now I’m doing something else entirely. So it goes.

I have been obsessed with computers for most of my life; my parents got our first family computer when I was 9 in 1993. I grew up on DOS 5.0 and Win 3.11, and lived through all the weirdness that was Windows in the ’90s and early 2000s. I tried Linux back in the ’90s (Slackware, which was a really difficult learning curve at the time, and still mostly is), but switched to it full-time in 2007 when I found out about Ubuntu (I think it was Hardy Heron but don’t remember). I used Xubuntu for many years, but now I run Debian Xfce and absolutely love it.

I adore Latin and Greek. I haven’t spent enough time on it lately, but I’ve been studying Latin since 2001 and Greek since 2003, so it’s been a long but wonderful road. I taught for a number of years as a graduate student and then an adjunct, and then taught middle and high school Latin and Greek for 3 years, but ultimately academia was not for me. I translate as much as I can in my spare time, and I need to make more time to read both languages. Lately I’ve been reading Emily Wilson’s marvelous Iliad translation (her Odyssey translation is also amazing and came out a few years earlier).

I am much happier in my current job, where I have the opportunity to help people every day in various ways. Thankfully it’s a 9-5 sort of job, so once I go home, my time is my own and I can pursue whatever I choose to. And no class prep on weekends has been super nice. I also have more time to work on computing stuff, writing, studying on my own, and relaxing a little more. My work-life balance has been far, far better these days…