If you prefer Riso's enneagram synopsis instead of the MBTI, I'm a Five (5w4, Iconoclast) and Cherie's a Two (2w1, Server).

For those of you who haven't the faintest clue what version of Greek I'm babbling in, let's reduce all this psycho-mumbo-jumbo to the following: I'm a thinker, Cherie's a helper, Connor's a questioner, and Brendan's the life of the party.

___Religion___________________________

Here. Let me make it easy for you by shooting myself in both feet:

Both my wife and I are conservative Christians.

Now that I've no doubt triggered a number of negative stereotypes, left a bad taste in your mouth (here, want a beer?), and totally left you repulsed, regressed, and recalcitrant, I can honestly say that things between us can only improve -- so let's begin...

Now forget Pat Robertson, Benny Hinn, the Trinity Broadcasting Network, and any guy with immaculate hair, who needs at least ten seconds to say the word "JE-sus." Forget Ronald Reagan, Oliver North, and other smarmy flag-wrapped patriots.

We're talking real life here, not stereotypes -- "rubber-meets-the-road", no-kidding-around, life-changing experiences and philosophy.

Oddly enough, Cherie and I come at this from totally opposite angles, and it's a wonder we agree on as much as we do. I'm the skeptic [Scully!], while she's the believer [Mulder!]. I challenge even the most innocent-sounding comments before accepting them as possibly true -- lost in my little greyscale world -- while Cherie runs on full-tilt gut conviction, accepts comments from authority, and thrives in a world of bitmapped line art.

How could love survive?

Well, admittedly, for a long while this was hell. But now we've learned to appreciate and even value each other's perspective. (To paraphrase the Osmonds, the bastions of intellectualism that they are, Cherie's "a little bit gentry, I'm a little bit Thoreau.") In the meanwhile, it's been interesting to note how we seem to reach similar conclusions the more time that goes by.

And in any case, this is *my* Web site, so there won't be any Precious Moments, "Footprints" recitations, or Sandi Patti endorsements gracing these pages. (Um, not that there's anything wrong with that...) Naw, I want to wrestle with the nasty stuff that most people like to hide in the back closet -- at least, that's my current plan.

___Location___________________________

Although we currently abide in Pennsylvania (otherwise known as "Home of The Pleasant Cows" or perhaps "That Disgusting Industrial Slagpit Leftover from the Industrial Revolution"), we have a very real and sincere desire to travel to warmer areas of the country. In other words, we've always prefered San Diego and Atlanta to Scranton, Minneapolis, and possibly Anchorage. Anyone with a summer home not in use, please let us know.

___More of Me_________________________

The universe is a frontier to be explored, occupying my attention more than trivial things such as household chores, oil changes, and social gatherings. After all, it's hard to stay in focus when there's something new to learn around the corner! And it's never good enough to learn the basics, because I want to understand the entire THING -- not just part of it.

(This not only makes me a comprehensive reader and analyzer, but also a perpetual collector of things and ideas. I can never buy one work by an artist but must track down her entire lifetime efforts. I constantly find myself sitting in a dark theatre long after the crowd has left, just so I can watch the credits and discover who served as the Best Boy, the Second Grip, and the Gal Who Brought Tuna To Work On Mondays. And my desk drawer probably looks like Thomas Alva Edison lives in there...)

My interests are creative and scientific -- in other words, the collection of ANY sort of knowledge, followed by the incorporation of said knowledge into some personalized visionary output. I could build a castle out of paper mache and all of the books I've read, and I can output in a variety of formats: text, music, poetry, and even graphic arts. (My strengths, however, are music and writing.)

Work history? Okay, I'll bite. A long time ago, in a book-publishing company far away, I edited computer titles for a subsidiary of The McGraw-Hill Companies ("We're McGraw-Hill -- and We Don't Care"), until their leveraged buyout of our smaller competing publishing company ran its course, they drained us dry of residual profits, and then shut us down. (Yeah, I know that it sounds harsh. Sometimes the truth is an ugly thing.)

(In a way, however, it wasn't all bad. The shutdown motivated me to get some direction in my life and pursue my desires, rather than floating along with the current.)

Next, I spent a year developing and writing articles for a computer technology magazine distributed to the DoD, exploring various forms of computer tech and how the government was putting it to use. During this time, I also wrote some advertising supplement magazines for Big Players like Novell and Adobe. And my work with yet *another* Big Player during that time proved to me that the Dilbert cartoon is not fictitious at all, but actually a horrible Drama in Real Life.

(Some might have called this particular incident a comedy. However, a comedy is when something bad happens to someone else, while a tragedy is when it happens to YOU. And sadly enough, that particular incident ended up being a tragedy. Ugggh.)

Actually, I knew Dilbert was real before that point. Due to its size, McGraw-Hill had already taught me the perils of bureaucracy.

___The Endless Quests That Are My Life___

Alright. I am now going to bare my soul, and if you have any decency, you won't look. Or at least not laugh. I plan to accomplish the following before I die:

• Develop the perfect pizza crust, soon after I install a kiln in my kitchen.
• Wring the best espresso from cheap beans and a stunted Mr. Coffee capuccino maker.
• Write novels too good to make the bestseller lists, yet crappy enough to bring in a ton of money and enlighten folk for years to come. (Hmm, except for the bestseller list, that sounds like James Redfield.)
• Own an island where I can use mosquito blood samples to create clones of extinct species such as the dodo bird. (Can you imagine an island overrun by dodos? Besides Manhattan?)
• Redefine reality in my own particular idiom. (I don't know what this means, but when it happens, I'll let you know.)
• Control majorities in both Microsoft and McDonalds, so that I can force people to buy Big Macs after they are incorporated into the new Windows architecture. (After all, the government should not be allowed to limit the natural evolution of computer operating systems. It's heresy, I tells ya, HERESY!)
• Own every Chuck Jones cartoon produced, so that I can be mummified in them at death, preserving the clips into antiquity. (It beats red tape.)