About

I'm Martin. This is my home page.

Background

I’m from Long Island, New York, a breeding ground for obnoxious, rude, spoiled, superficial, materialistic, self-absorbed, insecure, depressed people with eating disorders. I’d like to think I escaped relatively unscathed. Then again, perhaps so would everybody else.

Work

Professionally, I can be best described as an information technology generalist. I’ve worked in systems administration, software development, and tech support, occasionally all three at once. I tend to question the way things are done — a lot — and I love finding ways to automate repetitive efforts and streamline work processes. More information is available from my résumé.

College

I graduated from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 2005 with a degree in computer science. I did a second degree in music for fun. In retrospect, maybe I should’ve done something more useful with that time. Oh well.

My collegiate life was consumed largely by Pipe Dream, the campus newspaper. I started out as a copy editor — I have no training in grammar and know none of the rules, but somehow can just tell when things are wrong and how to fix them. I eventually wound up as the associate editor, acting as the copy desk chief and newsroom technology manager. Some of my fondest memories of college are of sitting in Denny’s at 7am on a Tuesday after getting the stupid paper off to the printer. I was also a member of Harpur Chorale.

One of the more entertaining classes I took in college was The History of Science and Technology with Prof. Fa-ti Fan. Some quotes can be found here.

Stuff I Like

I've been a “technology enthusiast” for most of my life, beginning when my father purchased a Tandy 1000 in the late '80s. A PC user since MS-DOS 3.x, I was an ardent Mac basher for years, to the point that a section of my web site was dedicated to the task. But a few years ago, I saw the light during an all-night InDesign session at the newspaper, and I've been drinking the Apple Kool-Aid ever since. Today, my computer is a MacBook Pro. (I maintain that the Mac actually did suck until OS X, and that I wasn't wrong all those years.) I'm dying for an iPhone, but am not willing to switch to AT&Tingular to get one.

I’m a longtime music geek. I played the violin and the piano until around when I started college, and I studied voice in college. I wasn’t terribly good at any of those things, mind you, but I have perfect pitch, which helped me fake it. I tend to prefer earlier music (Renaissance through early Classical periods) to the more grandiose, dramatic works of the Romantic. Years ago, I tried to compose some, unconsciously ripping off various Baroque idioms. I also like modern art music – the weirder, the better. Here in the current century, I’ve been into The Decemberists and Arcade Fire lately.

I’m a big fan of the stand-up comedy of Jerry Seinfeld, George Carlin, and Chris Rock. Ditto music parodist “Weird Al” Yankovic, who just seems to get better with every album, despite having been in the business for close to 30 years. Also among my favorites is Peter Schickele, the classical music parodist responsible for the PDQ Bach music. He’s about a thousand years old, and he’s pretty much guaranteed to leave you scratching your head if you’re not a total music dork. But for those of us who think unresolved appoggiaturas are freaking hilarious, he never disappoints.

I don’t watch much TV these days. The Office is really the only current show I watch, simply because it’s too good not to. Old favorites include Seinfeld, Fresh Prince of Bel-air, Get Smart, and the first three seasons of Family Guy.

Tidbits

I met my girlfriend, Kim, on JDate in 2006. (Yes, Internet dating is now socially acceptable. Didn’t you get the memo?) She’s as awesome as she is freckled.

My bar mitzvah took place during a Nor'easter in the fall of '96. The restaurant flooded, and the party came to an abrupt conclusion when the local fire department evacuated the attendees via lifeboat. I used to have a more detailed account of that day on this site, and may put it back up at some point.

This site was once called Babadi's World. The name came from my younger brother, who called me Babadi (BAH bah dee) when he was two years old and couldn't pronounce my name. But now he's a teenager, and that moniker seems awfully dated. Most recently, it was called Pride in Double Geekdom, referring to my interests in computers and music.