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This semester's quote:
"I think that when you gotta spit, you gotta spit."
--Iron Head Haynes
Hi! I'm Dave. I'm a graduate statistics major at Colorado State University. I grew up in York Springs, PA, about 13 miles from Gettysburg. This picture (93 K JPEG) was taken at "The Slaughter Pen", the base of Little Round Top. Since the land around Gettysburg is rather flat, securing the two main hills was very important. I like reading about the Civil War, but visiting the battlefield (especially in the winter when there are no tourists) is better. My parents live on a 400-acre, 375-head dairy farm, so when I go home, I feed and milk the cows.
I was a mathematics major in my undergraduate college, Messiah College. Messiah is directly between Gettysburg and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and it's a private Christian liberal arts school.
One of my advisors, Dr. Tweedie, does a masterful impression of Baldric from the Blackadder series and K McKinnon, a Scottish statistician. You just don't find that in statistics department heads anymore.
My birthday is September 16, 1970 so that makes me, er, 25 usually. September 16 is also the birthday of The Sun King, Louis the XIV. Louis and I go way back. I don't get photographed much, but I'm unashamed of my passport picture (23 K JPEG) (you just like my nose). For more (non-posed) pictures of me, you can look at the pictures from my Cambodia trip.
As you may have figured out by that passport/nose reference, I like the musical groups The Who , Dire Straits , and in general, most British bands from the 60's and 70's. Strangely, though, I also love Men Without Hats, thousands of thanks to John Hillstrom for showing me the Web page (there's a mailing list too). Some of my hardest studying (namely, Measure Theory (and it deserves to be capitalized) was done to Men Without Hats. They sing about love and use some clever surrealistic imagery.) I've tried just about every other type of music to study to, but it seems to me that math/stats must be done with this kind. I don't know how Gauss and Fisher and those other great stats guys ever got anything done..
Here's a picture of where my office (68 K) used to be, Statistics 309. My officemates used to be Carlos (who has a beard and moustache now, unlike my passport picture) and Marc. My job right now is doing light system administration for the stats computers and Webmastering a bit.Some of my hobbies are ice skating, drawing, and volleyball. I recently injured myself playing volleyball, so I don't play competitively anymore. But I still enjoy pick-up games and our stats dept plays together sometimes when the weather is nice. I like reading about modern art too. But here's a contradiction: I like those, er, less cultured songs that are parodies of other songs and the wider category of music known affectionately as Dementia, named for Dr. Demento. Dr. Demento made funny music very popular since the 50's. You can see a few of my lyrics submissions in the Dr. Demento web site.
One recent hobby of mine is participating in play by e-mail games. I'm in an e-wrestling league in which I manage a professional wrestler, and I'm in an Australian Rules Football League in which I pit my Manix Maulers against other footy teams. It would be nice if I knew how to play footy, but that apparently wasn't a requirement to manage a team.