I was born in Houston Texas on July 16th, 1982. I lived in Phoenix Arizona for most of my childhood and graduated from Desert Vista High School in the year 2000. I didn't do anything notable in high school except for running cross country my junior and senior years, which undoubtably was the best experience of my life. If it wasn't for CC, I would probably be a very different person than I am today.

I went to school at Purdue University in West Lafayette Indiana to obtain my bachelor of science degree in computer engineering. It was a long and painful four years of my life, but it was painful in a good way and I learned more there than I ever thought I could. I did a few activities there, but unfortunately because of the demonic nature of my major I always had to end up quitting them so I could keep up with all of my classes. The clubs I was the most active in were running club, aiki jujutsu, and kendo. I graduated in May 2004.

Which brings me to now, as I prepare for my first semester as a graduate student. I honestly don't have a clue about what field of computer engineering I want to focus my studies on, as I am equally intrigued by both hardware and software. I guess you could say I'm just sitting on the fence waiting for a breeze to blow me one way or the other. But either way I am anxious to start my new life and curious as to what will happen to me during the next few years.

Other than the obvious things like Linux and computers, there are a lot of things I'm interested in. I like reading although I don't have much time for it. The books I buy and read are almost all non-fiction, because I always like to learn when I read. One of my favorite subjects is theoretical physics and the book I bought most recently was on superstrings and the search for the theory of everything ("The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene, its a truly excellent read). I haven't watched TV in 3 years and don't really plan to start back up as I think the majority of American programs suck (I abhor reality TV). I do however watch a lot of drama shows from Japan, China, and Korean that I think are much better than 95% of what I can see locally. I watch anime as well (too much of it actually) and read manga. I studied Japanese for 3 years a Purdue so it helps. I go running whenever I can afford to and I like to stay in shape as much as possible. I listen to a wide variety of music genres, including rock/alternative, foreign, classical, and anything else that sounds good to me (which usually isn't country). I used to play a lot of video games back in the day, and I still do from time to time but I don't have nearly as much free time as I used to. My favorite genres are RPG and strategy games. A couple months ago in June I wrote a short story which has somehow become the base for a new game that I'm the lead developer of, called Hero of Allacrost. Its a lot of fun and I've learned many things while working with the other people on my staff.

If you still want to hear more about me, then you are a freaking stalker so please go away.


Contact Information
Here is a list of e-mail addresses that you can reach me at. I check all of these addresses multiple times daily, so you should never have a problem getting a message to me no matter what address you send it to. Please send it to the most appropriate address corresponding to the subject of your message.


This is my UT Austin ECE e-mail address. I use this address for issues related to school, work, or research.


This is my personal e-mail account.


This address is for communication regarding my open source project, Hero of Allacrost.

I have several more e-mail accounts and forwarding addresses, but for the most part those are unused or forward mail to one of the three accounts above.


Hangouts and Aliases
I've become a little bit of an IRC junkie lately, though its not nearly as bad as my forum addiction. Freenode and IRCHighway are the two servers that I spend the most time in, and my registered alias there is RootsLINUX. In fact, if you ever go anywhere online and you find someone by the name of Roots or RootsLINUX, that could be me. Roots is a nickname I got from high school and I use it everywhere online.