(You might also be interested in my CV in HTML or PDF format.)
Educational Affiliations [This paragraph mostly exists to help former classmates find me.] I grew up in Queens, New York and attended Hunter College High School (class of 1987). I attended the Research Science Institute in 1986 and the Bessie F. Lawrence International Summer Science Institute at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1987. I have two S.B. degrees from MIT (class of 1991): one in Course VIII-A (Physics with Electrical Engineering) and one in Course XXI-E (Humanities with Engineering; in my case that was Music with Computer Science). While at MIT I lived at Random Hall, worked for Project Athena, and my extracurriculars included the Student Information Processing Board (SIPB) (of which I served as secretary and chairman), the MIT Gilbert & Sullivan Players (founding president), the Lecture Series Committee (LSC) (publicity director), and Hillel (just a member!)
Professional I've been a software developer since college. My first job was at Charles View Software, where we developed lots of fascinating projects on a contract basis. After that I spent an extraordinary year at Interchange (I joined just as Ziff-Davis sold it to AT&T). Once AT&T laid us and 30,000 others off, I went to Artisoft (now apparently called Vertical) working on version 1 of a Windows-based PBX called TeleVantage, which remains available today, over ten years later. In July 1997 I came to Pageflex, a division of Bitstream, where I spent almost eleven great years developing dynamic page-layout and web-to-print software. I was privileged to work with a group of brilliant people who are also wonderful human beings. As of May 2008 I have taken a position at Adobe, working on a really cool project called Buzzword.
Music Music is an essential part of my life. From 1992 to 2007 I sang bass with The Zamir Chorale of Boston, including ten years (1996-2006) as bass section leader. I served on Zamir's board for eight years, five of them as clerk. I also compose music, including an oratorio based on Pesukei d'Zimrah, the introductory Psalms of the morning service, and Bible Bystanders, a collection of humorous songs telling Bible stories from the perspective of secondary or tertiary characters.
Puzzles I've enjoyed word puzzles since I was very young. In high school and college I tried my hand at constructing: I had a puzzle printed in the newsletter of the Gilbert & Sullivan Society of New York and three puzzles [1] [2] [3] in the MIT student newspaper, The Tech. I've been a member of the National Puzzlers' League since 2003, and had a cryptic published in National Puzzlers' League Cryptic Crosswords. My first New York Times puzzle was published on Sunday, 26 August 2007, and was a collaborative effort with Craig Kasper, Jeffrey Harris, and Todd McClary. (The latter two are uncredited because the Times will only run two names on a byline.) [Other unpublished puzzles]
Other creative outlets I'm working on a siddur (Jewish prayer book) which is a wonderful project combining my love of Jewish text study, correct nusach (Jewish liturgical chant), fine typography and typology (font creation), and bookbinding. I love to cook and bake, although I haven't had much time for either recently.