My name is Jordan Sissel, and I'm a geek.

In short one paragraph: I'm a hacker. My hack projects don't always deal with computing. I tinker, I fiddle, I break, and I build. Doctors call it Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. I call it life.. My style is a bit of charisma, a bit of dork, a bit of shy, and a bit of spontaneity held together with duct tape and super glue and sprinkled with a healthy dose of uncertainty.

How did I get here? (aka, the path to geek)

Before I went to RIT (college), I knew precisely squat about Unix, Linux, Open Source, Free Software, the whole shebang. That all changed when I came to Computer Science House. I quickly was flooded with various buzz words; people trying to sway my tender, fragile, Windows-weenie mind towards someone's favorite *nix. I ended up becoming fond of FreeBSD over the alternatives Linux had to offer. Turns out that everything sucks, it is only to which degree a particular item sucks that determines it's value. I tend to use the thing that sucks least for a particular task.

Throughout my time at RIT, I've learned more about computing outside of class than I did in class. I've found that structured academia is a poor substitute for self-guided exploration.

So what now? I spent my first two years out of college working at Google, which was awesome. I now work for OnLive doing similar things (production/infrastructure scaling/automation). I also write thousands of lines of code and play with lots of software in my own pursuit of knowledge. Most of my productive and research efforts can be found on this website in the form of articles, projects, code snippets, oneliners, and other research.

However, when I'm not entrenched writing code or doing random research, I'll be spending my time with my very loving girlfriend fiancée wife and our doggy. Beyond those interests, I like biking, swimming, playing ice hockey, rollerblading, skateboarding, and rocking out (whatever that entails). I love music, and I'm learning to play guitar.

About this site's name:

To fully encompass my dorkiness, I made perl help me pick a domain name. Read about how I picked it here. The fact that 'semicomplete' is a valid sed(1) expression further illustrates my dorkiness.

About this site:

I figured 'semicomplete' is a fairly good description of me and my pursuits. Most of my personal projects never get finished because the goals were achieved long before completion of the project, and my search for knowledge (mostly in computing) is also never-ending. Anything I learn will be shared on this site, given the opportunity.

Contact me:

Jabber:

jls at this domain

Email:

jls at this domain

Stuff I like:

Browser:

Firefox

Editor:

vim

MUA:

nmh gmail

OS:

FreeBSD

Shell:

zsh (or ksh when that's not available)

Window Manager:

ion

Languages:

C, Perl, Python, Ruby and many more

Terminal Emulator:

xterm