About

Personal
I moved to Chicago, IL from Grand Rapids, MI in October of 2007. My decision to move across the lake had much less to do with the lack of interesting work in Michigan than the overwhelming urge to live somewhere where I could pursue my capricious personal interests, and seek out those who share them. They are (for the time being) as follows:

  • Incredibly loud, depraved music
  • Riding my brown bicycle
  • Horror films and literature
  • New Media literacy & participatory culture
  • Digital preservation and archives
I am fortunate in that the last two items overlap with my current work, which was not always the case.

Work
I do web development and content management for an academic library consortium at a large university here in Chicago. Our consortium consists of North American universities, colleges and independent research libraries. The consortium acquires and preserves newspapers, journals, documents, archives and other traditional and digital resources for research and teaching. These resources are then made available to member institutions cooperatively, through interlibrary loan and electronic delivery. My work usually involves maintaining some of our internal systems, including enterprise-level wiki software, our main website, catalog, etc. I also help with the technical aspects of the certification and assessment of digital archives, which is an emerging area in the field that we are excited to be exploring. We are currently working on switching our site over to a new CMS, which is on the verge of being approved.

This Site
Although the internet and large social networking sites have made college reunion-type activities mostly obsolete, I still enjoy seeing people in person when I get the chance. When that is not an option, I will post sporadic photographs to this site with the hope that you are doing well. Updates to this site are sent from my iPhone via the Wordpress Application, which allows users to post images from their Camera Roll with relative ease. This will be yet another version of squarehalo.org, which has been my personal website for several years now. My writing is elsewhere.

I hope to keep this website up-to-date. I was at a large horror convention a while back, and was thoroughly disappointed when the two guys in front of me—who offered to take my picture with Cassandra Peterson—failed to send the photograph to the e-mail address I wrote down for them. Unless they find that slip of paper, you will never see me awkwardly crouching down (bosom level) next to the table where she signs glossy photos for $25 a pop. I have never owned a digital camera, so having one with me at all times should remain a novelty long enough for you to get an accurate sense of my life in the city.