Intellectual Stimulation vs. Hernias

I have many books. So does dan. We have moved them all a number of times, and they are rather heavy. We've moved together from Ithaca to Boston to Kitchener/Waterloo, Ontario. We bought a house with lots of room for book-shelves. Both of us come from families with lots of books, and whenever I'm in New York City I always come home with bags from the Strand Bookstore, the most overwhelming used bookstore in the world. Since then, we moved into a condo with fewer bookshelves, and the count of books went down somewhat, but there are still a lot.

I like science fiction. I really enjoy Greg Bear, Bruce Sterling, and Neal Stephenson. I enjoyed The Dazzle of Day by Molly Glass, a Quaker sci-fi story set light-years from earth. Also, I very much enjoy Bears Discover Fire by Terry Bisson. If you like offbeat sci-fi I recommend checking out They're Made Out of Meat, a quick short story.

My favorite regular fiction author is Paul Auster; I particularly enjoy re-reading "Mr. Vertigo" and "City of Glass." I'm a big fan of Toni Morrison.

I have a complete collection of Dykes to Watch Out For, not only because their publisher, Firebrand Books, was located across the street from us on the Commons of Ithaca, NY; (and then I was Firebrand's website editor, after we moved to Canada). I like Edward Gorey books too.

In the realm of non-fiction, I read a bit of science, history tending toward history of cities and gay and lesbian history, and more recently, Indigenous studies- historical and modern.

Since I first wrote this section (back in 2002), I significantly reduced the amount of reading I did for fun. But I've gone back to reading a bit more, again, because it makes me happy. If you're interested, I track most of my reading on goodreads.

The Name Game

I have an interest in coincidences. When the fabric of one's life develops a few slip-stitches. The kind of thing you generally don't notice until suddenly, as if in The Twilight Zone, your life has a pattern you can just barely see and can't possibly understand. Then the moment passes and you're back in the humdrum world.

Of course your average day has millions of chances for "a strange thing" to happen, most with little actual effect on the world. But if you look for strange things, like magic you'll see more of them. Occasionally, they're useful; like getting a day's worth of good elevator karma; or getting a phone call from the person you most want to talk to. But mostly their intrinsic value is simply getting a chance to grin and feel like part of the universe sort of makes sense somehow.

Once upon a time, I thought I had an uncommon first name. Then I left for school, and lo, Daniels were popping out of the woodwork. In fact it turns out that Daniel Allen is not an uncommon name.

It started in my first week at school when I started getting snail mail for the other Daniel Allen, then a Senior. My second week I learned my unique Cornell user ID was shared between myself (Daniel Robert Allen) and Daniel Robert Adinolphi. We were both dra1 for a week, despite protests by Cornell Information Technologies that it was strictly impossible. Douglas Adams was right on target with the Someone Else's Problem Field. People simply won't believe reality if it's inconvenient. Interestingly enough, dra1 also works in Information Technology, which I learned from a mutual friend who ran into him at a security conference.

When I was a teenager I went to a gathering of 200 Quaker teens (YouthQuake in Glorietta New Mexico, 1994), and met a total of five other Quaker Daniels and Dans. That was fun, especially since I got to introduce some of them to each other.

In 2003 at Summer Gathering of Friends General Conference, I played the card-game Fluxx with a Daniel, Daniel, dan, and Gary. And those were just the people staying in our dorm-hall.

There have been three Daniels on the payroll of my former consulting company, including business-partner (now professor), Jason Daniel Hartline. In 2000-2001 I consulted for Millennium Pharmaceuticals. My office-mate Daniel Noël had just moved from Canada to Boston; I moved from Boston to Canada eight months later.

There's also the Daniel Allen House in Walpole, MA, and Dan Allen Drive at NC State. I guess it's gratifying- and possibly weird- that Google thinks I'm one of the most authorative Daniel Allens.

When I first got onto facebook, I found a group named "Yes, my name is Daniel Allen too." I became member number 53. Then the group vanished. No idea what happened.

Last but most definitely not least, my sweetie is a dan, with whom I have been lucky to share just about half our respective lives together.

So, that's the long version of the story when people learn that we're "Dan and Daniel" and I say, "We didn't plan it that way."

Five facts

1) I used to blog regularly, and I miss it. The book of faces has inertia going for it; and I'm not yet pulling the plug there, but I want to try this again, in long form. So welcome! Pull up a chair!

2) In 2012 I started a blog about being Quaker. It's named after work by one of my favourite Quaker poets, and also after one of my favourite Quaker Science Fiction novels. I might also post there, occasionally. We'll see.

3) I became a dual American / Canadian citizen as of June 22, 2007. My partner dan and I moved here from the US in August 2001, so he could take the position of professor of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo.

4) When we moved here, I was a self-employed web application developer, for a much-younger Web. My business-partner and I made our first $2,000 out of a meeting at Comdex in 1996. I look back on those days fondly but definitely don't miss them! I worked for various companies doing Web 1.0 stuff; but I really hated chasing down clients for payment. I started working at the University of Waterloo in November 2004, in a job that was roughly 75% my dream job. Since then I've changed bosses six eight times, but still work for the same unit, Computer Science. My job is currently 100% my dream job. The me-of-half-my-lifetime-ago would be astounded. I expect I will stay at the University until I retire.

5) In July 2002, we adopted the cutest puppy in the world. At the time Rover was six weeks old. It was a few weeks later that we discovered that a certain number of people are offended that we named a girl dog Rover. I was really perplexed. I'm told that her cousin Sonia the Samoyed wanted to know if she's a squeak-toy or a snack. She really was the best dog. She lived to a ripe old 16 years, and we miss her all the time.

In August 2021, we adopted the director of the River Institute who is an absolute delight. And very photogenic. River is learning new things every day; even if it is "what is the best way to arrange my blankets for napping?"