I'm a magpie of sorts, picking out shiny objects and adding them to a slowly growing collage of ideas. The process began in early High School in a small town in South Dakota where, not feeling at all like I fit in, I read Carl Jung's Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, Alan Watt's Psychotherapy East and West, and R.D. Laing's Politics of Experience all of which showed up in the paperback rack at my father's drug store. This convinced me that everyone was pretty much nuts, but ultimately, this made no cosmic difference; things got better from there.

If I were to say that I was good at something, it would be grounded in that: somewhere between engineering and collage, solving problems with research and the tools at hand (or, if absolutely necessary, building the tools.) And pursuing the fat, dumb, and lucky career path.

I've been a San Francisco Bay Area resident since I ran out of money in Oakland in late 1976 and stumbled into a job at Sierra Designs, a hippie backpacking company. I was one of the founders of Mountain Hardwear, and I'm currently supporting my good friends at SlingFin as a Board Member and occasional CSO. Before that, I worked variously as a short-order cook, a construction worker, in farm labor, and in the worst possible food production factory. The last job application I filled out was for the short-order cook job at Lerk's Bar & Grill in Afton, Minnesota.

I became a computer professional by solving the Colossal Caves game on HP3000 'mini-computer' and ultimately designed and built systems that managed inventory and capital by focusing forecasting and supply chain management on the key issues and opportunities in our corner of the business world. I once fixed a tweaked tailbone with the original Kaypro II and a spectacular fall on my ass. My design inspiration — my pattern language before Christopher Alexander's concept was ported to software design — was always biological systems. They're highly evolved, diverse, and as complex as you might want or need. The humans involved are always part of the system, not merely its operators.

During this period, I was also a volunteer housing activist and community organizer in Oakland.

I've always loved books about natural systems as well as the 'pulps' (SF, Fantasy, Detective Fiction, and Horror), plus assorted non-fiction. I have to give shout-outs to Carl Jung and Thomas Kuhn. I love all sorts of music except Opera and modern country, and I'm currently wavering on both of those. A Desert Island list would have to include P-Funk, Richard Thompson, Sonic Youth, Sturgill Simpson, and PJ Harvey.

Stories are a lifelong interest. (https://alantabor.medium.com/the-story-of-story-part-1-9c7029877a1e) Medium is just the latest iteration. I don't so much write as slowly extrude text in an effort to research and think through the things that puzzle, delight, or annoy me. Lately, that's been American politics, and the emphasis is on puzzle and annoy.

I'd be happy if it would just let me go, but what can you do?