This site has been tested using Internet Explorer 6, Firefox 0.8, Mozilla 1.6, Netscape 7.1, and Opera 7.23, all on Windows XP. I attempt to write code that degrades gracefully, but I can't make any guarantees. I don't have other platforms on which to test at my disposal, and I refuse to install yet another version of - gag - Netscape on my computer.

Anyway, it took me weeks to get this thing working properly, and I'm still learning, so if you have any constructive criticism, please feel free to send it my way. The source for both this page and the linked stylesheet is well-commented, so take a gander, and don't hesitate to ask me if you have any questions.

P.S. Remember, if it glows when you roll your mouse over it, it's clickable.

Ya, hokay, so this is me. I was four months old, and apparently indescribably thrilled by the big maroon-ish chair, and the fact that I could curl my toes just...so. I was pretty much the happiest baby on the planet. Then 28 years happened.

I'm Indian by ethnicity, and a New Yorker by birth. I realised very early on that I don't like the cold. Don't be sad, the feeling's mutual. After being persecuted by the weather for 20-something years, I finally left, moving to Phoenix, Arizona. OK, so it was really that my employer was spinning off a new company, and asked me to move, but hey, who's counting? I worked at a dotcom there for a coupla years, and then some genius figured out that we didn't have a business model (a fact abundantly clear to most of us peons).

End pipe dreams. Exit house, Range Rover and Maxima. Enter bilious resentment and bitterness.

And here I am.

I fail to understand how people can get bored. The word doesn't exist in my vocabulary, except to describe myself in the company of astoundingly boring people. When left to my own devices (a risky endeavour, but that's at least half the fun, isn't it?), there just aren't enough hours in the day to do all the stuff I want to do.

The thing is, I'm a Leo, see? So I don't really know much about apathy or, for that matter, moderation. It's all about the extremes. I don't simply "like" things, like normal people. Oh noooo... I looooove them. My passion knows no bounds, and I'm equally passionate about everything I do. Which basically translates to being a Jill of all trades, master of a very (very) few.

I love languages, and speak several. I was gifted, at a young age, with the talent of mimicry, which makes languages easy for me to learn. I also love imitating people. I do very (very) few good impressions, but I have a knack for accents. Enter dream job #1: Voiceover work.

I love playing video games. Console, PC, Pocket PC, GBA, whatever. On the PC side, adventure is my genre. On the console side, I play whatever's fun. Do I get time to play video games? No, of course not; but you can bet I have the most extensive, anal database of games I own and would some day like to own that you've ever seen. Enter dream job #2: Game reviewer.

I love reading. I have my guilty pleasures, my "fluff" reading: King, Koontz, Grisham, the Rices. I have my true loves: Douglas Adams, Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, Terry Pratchett, The Chronicles of Narnia, the Harry Potter books. I have my nostalgic "how can anyone not love that book?" loves: the classics (Dickens, Austen), mysteries (Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys, Encyclopedia Brown), the Land of Oz books, anything by Roald Dahl or James Herriot.

I love drawing, but I suck at it. I was decent when I was little, but then I stopped. I was 12. A not very smart 12, apparently, but then, I was (*cough* am) rather given to making rash, impulsive decisions that change the entire course of my life.

I love CGI. I don't mean the Perl kind, I mean the Softimage kind. I used to dream of sweeping the floors at Pixar. Hey, I never said I was ambitious.

I love music - listening to, dancing to, singing, playing. I listen to just about anything, and like a lot of it. I love going dancing, but usually end up being a wallflower. I'm tellin' you what, tho', I can be one slammin' salsera, as long as I stay in my seat. I'm talkin' In Living Color's Fly Girl-like, if they were confined to chairs. And made of wood. Oh, never mind. I sing, but dogs in Brazil start whimpering, so I usually confine myself to the safety and perfect acoustics of the shower. I play (if one can call it that) tabla and sitar. Sort of. I used to. It's been a while. Oh, never mind.

Other stuff, all of which I love, but stuff to which I've not devoted as much time in my life as the aforementioned stuff: playing pool (8-ball and 9-ball), watching movies, driving, traveling, doing jigsaw puzzles, throwing parties, designing furniture, dreaming...

I'm also a total gadget and electronics freak. If I had the cash and didn't love having a garage so much, it would be a THX Select certified home theater right now. One of the things that bums me out most about Florida real estate is the absence of basements. Ah well, one day...

Hokay. So obviously I know this HTML stuff. I should, I've been an HTML grunt since '93, working typical startup-dotcom 100000000000-hour weeks. (No, really, just ask my ex. Key word being "ex.") So what am I doing here?

I'm not here for an easy A. Stop laughing! Tough crowd, yeesh. So as I was about to say, before the peanut gallery so rudely interrupted me (hey, it sounds good in my head, leave it alone), my employers always placed very narrow constraints on me and my staff. We had to stick to HTML 2.0 standards, we had to code "above the fold" (which means that people running at 640x480 should see the majority of our content without having to scroll), we couldn't use JavaScript, and I don't think we'd even heard of stylesheets. Basically, I was in high demand back in '93-'94, 'coz I was one of the few people around who actually knew this stuff, and that momentum carried me forward for a decade.

Well, maybe "forward" is the wrong word to use. I'm thinking I kinda sat still, while the entire industry passed me by. So. Exit job, enter obsolescence.

I'm here to remember stuff I've forgotten as my brain cells have atrophied, and I'm here to learn stuff that's new to me, stuff that'll prepare me to move to the next level.

Okay. I admit it. I know that if a fire gets lit under me, if my other classes become overwhelming, I could probably get by in this class with not too much stress. But that's not why I'm here. No. Really. I swear.

Still here?

I plan to actually get my degree this time (I didn't the first time around), and then re-visit this whole plans thing. I'm at VCC for my AS in Computer Programming & Analysis, and so I'll probably go job-hunting once I'm done. I'm job-hunting now, but for web stuff.

There's also this Bachelor's program in which I'm really interested, offered by one of the Art Institutes. But I'm thinking I should probably worry about this degree before I start dreaming about the next one.