My name is Mike, I am an optical engineer and statistician, currently employed with Corning Inc as the latter capacity, and have lived in the Corning NY area for the last few months after 40-something years in Massachusetts.
I have been gaming since Pong in the early-mid 70's, my parents bought one of the first Atari systems but I was too busy to play, but in late high school and undergrad school I started getting into gaming on my Apple ][+. My biggest addiction was Castle Wolfenstein (12 years before Wolf 3D!). My friends and I were also big into the early arcade boom and had a great place that was ahead of the curve.

But while I have always maintained contact with gaming, much of the 90's and early 00's were devoted to finishing school, starting career, getting married and having kids. So those years were almost all FPS on the PC (and Mac, I was a huge Marathon fan). My folks got me a GameBoy when they launched for my first job which had a fair amount of travel. I picked up a GBA and then a GBA SP when it came out and started handheld gaming, and then in ~2001 started getting much more time to put into this hobby. In 2003 I was anticipating KotOR and was pointed to NWN which was coming to the Mac, so I grabbed it ... and have been a huge RPG fan since! My first love is still PC (and Mac) games, either FPS or RPG, but I also love my DS and PSP.

My family is my first priority in my life and I love when I can share stuff with them.

I am managing editor at GamerDad.com (now focused at the GamingWithChildren.com blog), and am also an editor at RPGWatch.com where I also do a bunch of reviews and a quarterly round-up of handheld RPG's.

I know an awful lot about statistics, optics, semiconductors, and metrology in general.

I also love music, and anyone looking to expand their minds into the world of jazz should ask me for some starting points and next steps.

I have always had a sideline as a composer of electronic music and in our new house have finally been able to resurrect my full studio space which has been missing since we needed to make room for our second child. So I hope to find some quality music time soon as we get more settled and the weather outside becomes less inviting.

My favorite genres are RPG and FPS, and all of my favorite games are on the PC / Mac:
FPS: Jedi Knight II, Jedi Knight / Mysteries of the Sith, Soldier of Fortune II, No One Lives Forever 1 & 2, Duke Nukem 3D, Dark Forces, and oh so many more.
RPG: Gothic II, Divine Divinity, Baldur's Gate II, Planescape: Torment, KotOR, NWN, Betrayal at Krondor, Arcanum, etc.

Mostly during the day I am available.

    www.gamerdad.com
    www.rpgwatch.com

All 6 Star Wars movies, Eraserhead, The Good, the Bad & the Ugly, Blue Velvet, Real Genius, Better Off Dead, Dirty Harry series, Ran, Monty Python

Jazz is my love, and Avant Garde jazz is my fave: Miles Davis, Pat Metheny, Ornette Coleman, Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Art Ensemble of Chicago, John Coltrane, Louis Armstrong, Return to Forever, Albert Ayler, Jimmy Guiffre, Charlie Parker, Jaco Pastorius, Bobby Mcferrin