About Me
I spent the first two years of my life homeless. I started
programming when I was in kindergarten. I attended St.
Lawrence College for a semester when I was five. I competed
in track and field tournaments in grade two. I taught chess
classes in grade three, and I competed in provincial chess
tournaments in grades four and five. I was in the Royal
Canadian Air Cadets in grades seven and eight. I dropped out
of school in grade nine. I worked in an electronic recycling
facility when I was seventeen. I obtained a GED diploma when
I was eighteen, the earliest age allowed. I attended
Algonquin College for a year. I dropped out of the
University of Toronto with one semester remaining in my
bachelor's degree in computer science.
I self-host authoritative name servers, recursive DNS
resolvers, and email servers. I try to limit my reliance on
anonymous people for my critical infrastructure.
I prefer the night over the day. Boredom is my second
greatest enemy. Night walks are one of my favourite
activities.
I spent $150 travelling across Canada by train in my early
twenties. It was a weird and uncomfortable experience.
Someone stole the armrests from a few of the seats while I
was busy sprinting across Winnipeg to get back on the train
before it left multiple hours earlier than initially stated.
My final stop in Vancouver had a homeless encampment with at
least 100 people living in it. Teenagers were injecting
heroin into their veins on the sidewalk. A few homeless
people were trying to finesse money out of travellers
getting on the SkyTrain. During my trip, my brother tried to
murder my mom with a makeshift bomb. I visited a few
antisocial people that I knew from middle school. It's
really strange to have known so many antisocial people
throughout my life. I'm lucky to be deeply empathetic. Life
is challenging to antisocial people. Having remorse is
powerful. Self-sacrifice is important.
I spent a year of my mid twenties taking sole care of my mom
as she died of cancer. The worst part of the experience was
defending her from her abusive family. Nature is acceptable.
Human nature can be unacceptable. I had murderous rage due
to how she was treated by her narcissistic father. She was
sexually harassed by her father when she was a child. She
fled her home as a teenager after he imagined her as a child
prostitute during a drunken hotel stay. His first wife
killed herself before my mom left. He was violent with his
second wife up until my mom left. It was weird having him
force his way into my my mom's life as she was dying. It was
weirder having him try to force his way into my life after
her death. Abusers justify their behaviour in disgusting
ways.
I've lived in eleven cities. I'm an expert in Bash, C#, C++,
JavaScript, Python, Ruby, and Rust. I tend not to care about
what city I live in or what language I use. I like finding
problems and solving problems. I care about my home
environment and my work environment.
I'm married to
Yilin Zhang. We met in an awkward way in a computer science lab. We
asked each other to be partners on an assignment. Both of us
thought that we were being politely rejected. We saved each
other. It was a weird situation that barely makes sense.
I spent a month travelling across Japan in my mid twenties.
I spent most of my time in western Honshu. It was a
beautiful experience. They don't take accountability for the
horror they inflicted on Asia in the second world war. The
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum leaves a lazy implication.
My mom died shortly after I returned home. My sister stole a
few thousand dollars from my mom just as I was returning
home. My sister left my mom penniless and in debt in death.
She would later steal my deceased mom's car from my brother.
She then destroyed the car and blamed my wife. She claimed
to have a spiritual connection to the car. She refused to
drive with winter tires in a Canadian winter. She stayed at
my mom's apartment for a few days after my mom's death to
steal her few remaining valuable items. She disrespected my
mom in life and death. She believed that my mom's spirit was
following her and influencing her life. She didn't limit
this belief to only exist after my mom's death. My sister is
likely bipolar. Morality is important. Without morality,
life is war without allies. War without allies ends in
disgrace.
I find cui bono to be an incredibly powerful phrase.
It's prudent to remember the phrase in an era of LLM
enthusiasts. It's also prudent to remember the phrase in an
era of LLM luddites. Agendas exist. Some are more hidden
than others. Most communication is advertising. Dialectical
thinking is important.
I'm casual. I don't trust formality. Being polite is
important. Imposing your rules on others is not polite.
Fluidity is crucial. It's better to change yourself to fit
reality than to change reality to fit you.
I'm gifted. My emotions are heightened. I think very
intensely and I feel very intensely. My perception is honed.
I care deeply for vulnerable people. When I was five, my
father took me hostage in our apartment and threatened to
kill me while my mom desperately tried to bash down the
front door to save me. My paternal grandmother tried to
kidnap me at least once. It's likely that my father is a
sociopath. I'm lucky to be gifted. I'm thankful to be alive
and safe as an adult. I feel sorrow for those who are
vulnerable. It's difficult to accept the cruelty of many
people who are in positions of power. It's especially
difficult to see people be cruel to children.
I find it hard to understand the nature of non-gifted
people. It's hard to understand how one can lack my
intensity. There's a lot that I don't understand. Life is
magical. The magic lies in understanding. I'm lucky to crave
understanding. Being gifted is beautiful. It would be nice
for everyone to be gifted.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a
man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime
is an important proverb. Being gifted is teaching yourself.
A pain point for me with non-gifted people is their
slowness. Many non-gifted people would be wiser by being
faster and accepting failure. Failing as quickly as possible
is often a great way to learn. I don't like people who don't
accept failure. People who don't want to see reality are
annoying. The way that an average non-gifted person
experiences a cognitively impaired person is similar to how
I experience an average non-gifted person. I don't like
seeing how much non-gifted people struggle. It's sad that
not everyone can be gifted. I wish that my ability was the
baseline. Reality isn't fair.
Music has always been a large part of my life. It would be
boring to live without music. I tend to listen to loud high
energy music. I find it easy to extract meaning from many
genres of music. I would be surprised if I don't require
hearing aids in old age. I like to control my emotions with
music. Music is beautiful. Music has given me insight into
my neural plasticity. The brain is a wonderful organ. Music
is a great way to control your life. I suggest that everyone
experiment with music. Being static is such a poor way to
live. I can't be productive in an office. I need to allow
myself to be my natural dynamic self when working. Verbal
meetings steal my productivity. I prefer text-based
communication so I can listen to music while actively
participating in conversation. Being a high performer
requires accommodations. What works for the group doesn't
work for the outliers.
Reading is extremely important to me. I spend the vast
majority of my time reading. It's baffling to me how most
people essentially don't read. A life without reading is
dull to me. It pains me to see people struggling to read. It
happens often. I used to think that I had a problem with
communicating. I created artificial languages as a toddler.
I spent periods of my youth thinking that I was dumb for
needing to translate from my way of thinking to the common
ways of thinking. I spent most of my childhood oscillating
between thinking that I was dumb and thinking that I was a
genius. I didn't accept that I'm gifted until I was almost
thirty. I've very rarely thought that I was average. I had
growing pains with my self identity. The growing pains
started to fade as I reached my mid twenties. I'll likely
continue to have issues with my self identity throughout my
life. I didn't ask to be unique. Reality isn't fair. I read
slightly below 500 words per minute. I type about 80 words
per minute. I'm known to speak quickly. I tend to be easy to
understand. People seem to like it when I make their job
easier.
History is important to me. I've spent large portions of my
life studying history. I spent much of my childhood
researching historical figures. I found Alexander the Great
and Augustus to be the most interesting people to study as a
child. I also found Justinian the Great and his wife
Theodora to be interesting people to study. I find English,
Ottoman, and Japanese history to be important for
understanding the modern world. If you focus on those three
histories, you touch most of the broad strokes of world
history. Understanding ancient Roman and Greek culture is
important for understanding the broad strokes of modern
culture in developed nations. History is extremely complex.
I like to think of history in terms of grand strategy. It's
my personal way of understanding the world.
I invited my cognitively impaired cousin to live with me
after I learned that he was living in poverty. I discovered
that he was physically abused by his step father and mother.
While he was living with me, he tried to hide a lean
addiction. He also tried to hide that he was growing roughly
fifty cannabis plants in his room. He stole about $2,000
from me. He was in a state of psychosis. He spent much of
his time believing that he was a video game character or an
actor in a movie. He revealed that he had physically abused
his ex-wife. He refused to believe that they weren't going
to eventually get back together. He fled his ex-wife's
country and changed his name in an attempt to avoid legal
consequences. I decided to cut off contact with my extended
family after he took advantage of my charity. He had many
delusions of grandeur. He believed that I was his brother
and that I would save him. He was certain that I stole five
million in Bitcoin from him. His parents wanted to sue me.
It was an interesting experience to live with a crazy
person. I don't regret it. I learned a lot about my extended
family. He was quite racist. He had hate in his heart. I
love learning. I tried to give my cousin the tools to change
his life but he decided not to put in the effort required to
get clean and become educated. He kept talking as if he was
going to turn his life around, but he constantly went back
to abusing drugs and people. I've learned in my life that
most people don't change. Most people are aware of what they
need to do. But they fail to act. It's incredibly powerful
to simply say you'll do something and then do it.
It's strange that I'm related to so many fiends. I've never
felt any connection to anyone in my family other than my
mom. My mom's issue was that she was always searching for
guidance. My problem has been that I don't want to guide
anyone. I've needed to accept my role. It's taken me a long
time. It's emotionally difficult to lead people. It's
difficult to not take on the emotions of people who I'm
leading. It's difficult to surrender yourself to the needs
of a group while remaining an individual. Most of my
problems in life have been derived from difficulty in
integrating my emotions with my intellect. Most of my
relatives are drug addicts or alcoholics. Most of my
relatives have been shunned from every community that they
tried to join. It's strange to have grown up as a highly
empathetic gifted kid with many antisocial people in my
family. I'm very lucky to be gifted and to have been able to
forge my own path in life. People tend to reveal exactly who
they are if you're empathetic and pay attention.
I have a strong ability to visualize. I have an incredible
memory. I naturally think of abstract concepts in a way
that's similar to how people utilize memory palaces. I cry
when I interact with people and remember that my way of
thinking isn't natural to others. Mathematical thinking is
essentially impossible to those who can't build mathematical
structures in their mind. The language of math is hidden to
the vast majority of people. It's incredibly sad to
understand that not everyone can combine intuition and
reasoning in the way that I do. There's an internal feedback
loop that others are missing. It's incredibly exciting to
understand how I can help others see concepts that they
could never see on their own. Everyone that I've personally
known has had to understand mathematical relations through
rote memorization. I used to think that math was boring
based on how everyone around me studied math in school. I
have to study math on my own. Studying math with others is
an excercise in pain. Teaching math to others tends to be
enjoyable. Operating in abstract structures is fun. It's
beautiful to see abstract relations. Intelligence is likely
general. Humans are surprisingly similar in nature. Racism
is nonsense. The idea of different types of intelligences
quickly leads to scientific racism. Intelligence is mostly
genetic. Culture is mutable and explains many of the
differences between people. Most racism is misplaced
cultural opposition. All aspects of a culture should be
questioned. Religion and culture are equivalent. I don't
trust people who see religion as immutable. Those who see
religion as immutable are dangerously close to being racist.
I lived with an anti-Indian Vietnamese person and a Hindu
nationalist in my late twenties. It was a weird and funny
experience. I find it strange when racist people don't live
according to their beliefs. The Hindu nationalist was a poor
and uneducated illegal immigrant. She tried to convert me to
Hinduism on Christmas. The anti-Indian person had shallow
emotions and a lack of empathy. She faced neglect from her
family. My ex was also living with us while she was in a
long distance arranged marriage. It was a strange situation.
The Hindu nationalist was abandoned by her father and had
delusional thoughts involving her family. I wouldn't be
surprised if she was in and out of psychosis. It's likely
that she was severely depressed. She refused to pay rent for
half a year. She claimed that my ex stole tens of thousands
of dollars in gold. She faked her nursing degree in India
and claimed that my ex threw her illegitimate physical
degree out, preventing her from working. My ex was the first
friend that she had. She was in her mid twenties when they
met. I spent most of my time writing and playing video
games. I enjoy having fun. I learned a lot of weird stuff
while living in that environment. It was an odd experience
to live with a racist antisocial person and a
likely-psychotic illegal immigrant. My life has been
strange.
I'm married to
Yeonsu Choi. We met in a way that can't be understood by others. We
love in a way that can't be understood by us. We fell in
love at first sight. Polyamorous love is complex and
misunderstood.
I find it important to remember that we're all going to die.
Everything is temporary. None of us are immortal. I like to
delusionally think that we'll all live forever when I fall
asleep. I like to remember that I'm lucky to be alive when I
wake up. It's important to remember the beauty and
destruction in life.
My best ideas tend to be revealed to me in dreams. My dreams
are vivid. My visions can be bright enough to almost blind
me. If I was raised in a religious environment, I could see
how I'd attribute my visions to a god. It's a gift to be
able to automatically solve problems in my sleep. The
unconscious mind is powerful. Not everything can be
understood. I find bathing to be helpful in processing my
emotions. My bathroom has always been a safe space. It was
the one place that I felt safe from my family in childhood.
When I was eleven, a kid tried to molest me in his basement.
Trauma is blocking me from remembering exactly what
happened. He stalked me afterwards. Gay men trigger negative
emotions in me. I need to emotionally process that
experience. I don't want to discriminate against gay people
because of a single bad experience that I had in childhood.
I have an inherent instinct to violently defend myself
against gay men. It's irrational to think that most gay men
will try to harm me. It's likely that the gay kid was simply
socially awkward and didn't understand that I had no
interest in him. I had the same problem with girls in my
childhood. I'm fairly sure that my wife's ex isn't straight
and that he triggered a repressed memory of the gay kid
trying to molest me. I'm also fairly sure that falling into
a polyamorous love triggered repressed memories of groups of
girls in my childhood harassing me. Life is very strange. I
don't want my past to negatively effect people in the
present and future. I'm very friendly and I think that
people can mistake my friendliness and emotional awareness
as acceptance.
I'm married to
Marissa Shey. My life is incomplete without her. I fell in love with
her in university when she pointed out weird stuff about me
during conversations. She makes me feel noticed in a unique
way. She transferred to another university and left me
heartbroken. Our love almost became a tragedy.
I liked to climb large trees and buildings when I was in
elementary school. I'm terrified of heights. I'm not sure
why I climbed so much. It was probably due to boredom. In
middle school, I liked to skip class and walk through a
forest near my school. I spent a lot of time sitting on a
cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean instead of sitting in
class. I took every opportunity I had to avoid school. I can
confidently say that school was a net-negative experience
for me. School taught me how to be lazy. I tended to either
be a class clown or simply not talk to anyone. Some teachers
didn't know who I was. It made it easy to skip class. I
spent too much time in middle school flirting with girls.
Most of the girls were overall bad people. My experience in
school wasn't good. I put a lot of effort into trying to
forget my past. I got into a lot of fights. I was never the
aggressor. I wasn't a victim. I was bored and put myself
into situations that I could have easily avoided. Fighting
was annoying. It was also thrilling.
I'm very impatient with slowness and inefficiency. I dislike
how easily bureaucracy forms in any organization. It
physically pains me to accept mediocrity from people who I
know can do better. I have no problem with someone
performing their best and coming short of my standard. My
problem lies with people refusing to be the best version of
themselves. I believe that the vast majority of people are
capable of being greater than they already are.
How I Work
I use a 15-inch M3 Macbook Air with 16 GB of RAM. I use Zed
as my editor. I use Fish as my shell. I use Dvorak as my
keyboard layout. I use Homebrew as my package manager. I use
Neovim for editing in my shell. I use Ghostty as my terminal
emulator. I use Mosh for accessing my shell on my servers.
I sometimes use two 27-inch 4K 160 Hz IPS monitors with a
Ryzen 9 9950x CPU, a Radeon RX 7600 GPU, 96 GB of 5600 MHz
DDR5 RAM, and 2 TB of Btrfs-formatted four-lane PCIe 5.0
NVMe SSD storage. This computer runs jmkOS, my Gentoo-based
Linux distribution. It's currently in storage while I move
to Japan.
I have a server with a Ryzen 9 9950x CPU, 96 GB of 5600 MHz
DDR5 RAM, 1 TB + 500 GB of four-lane PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD
storage, 2 TB of four-lane PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD storage, and
144 TB of RAID 10-configured 7200 RPM HDD storage. All
storage is Btrfs-formatted. It also runs jmkOS. And it's
also in storage.
I have a mostly assembled computer with a Ryzen 7 9800x3D
CPU, a GeForce RTX 5080 GPU, 32 GB of 6000 MHz DDR5 RAM, and
2 TB of four-lane PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD storage. It's going to
run Windows or SteamOS. It's also in storage.
I have a server with an Intel N100 CPU, 16 GB of 3200 MHz
DDR4 RAM, and 500 GB of Btrfs-formatted one-lane PCIe 3.0
NVMe SSD storage. It runs jmkOS.