niflheim

I am a private individual, and not given to fits of self-importance, so I will attempt brevity here and leave details for other places.

For most of about 40 years (a truly horrifying phrase) I have lived in middle and east Tennessee in these United States of America. There is always some small number of people from the same area who wonder, “Are you that Dean Ellis?”, and the answer is “Yes”. What’s in a name? him whom we called Mephisto by any other name would etc.

Approximately 11 years ago, my beloved Laurie made the curious mistake of choosing to spend her life with me. Together, we have inflicted upon this world a daughter Kristine, and for this we may apologize but are not truly sorry.

My interests are wide-ranging, from my “Please don’t ask me whether I love you more than reading fiction” love of reading fiction, to writing same, to playing guitar, to developing software, to philosophy and art and metaphysics and points between and beyond.

I have worked for MySQL (surprise! it is a company with an open source product, not a self-hosted open source project) for many years. Sun Microsystems acquired us in early 2008, and now it seems Oracle Corporation will acquire Sun, and thus us.  So I suppose I may soon be working for them. Or not.

While I joined MySQL to split my time between server development and the support team, over the years I became mired completely within Support and today I am the global manager for that department. I have, most thankfully, been able to remain somewhat hands-on technically, else I would surely have gone mad. (Madder?)

I have been “online” since 1982, which has without doubt reorganized my brain in ways unlike most people. I have been described as a biker with a laptop, even when I possessed neither Harley Davidson nor Laptop Computer.  Today I have many laptops, and the Yamaha is at least a step in the direction of a Harley.

The general consensus is that I am damned difficult to categorize usefully.

My belief system can best be classified as Thelema, but frankly that doesn’t bring you any closer to understanding me. Maybe it pushes you even farther away.

One of the finest compliments I have received is:

Dean approaches everything as if it were an artform.

Another is:

Dean is subtle like a brick to the back of the head is subtle.

I started smoking cigarettes in 1989. Cigarettes started smoking me in 1991 (it was the best of times; it was the worst of times). One night in October 2004 I stopped smoking cigarettes. I believe everyone should experience and overcome addiction, but I was a considerate smoker and am now a considerate non-smoker, so I mind my own business.

If you want more than that, you’re going to have to earn it.

Let’s wrap this up with a couple of no longer recent pictures for my stalkers:

It is a three years old, but in laboratory tests I am able to recognize myself in this photograph.

And one about a year old, so that you, too, may join the chorus of approximately 150 people to notice that I seemingly shaved my beard.  Which I have regrown lately, simply to add to the confusion.