User:Jleybov

Intro

Though I've been reading Slashdot for longer than I can remember now, the first time I recall them mentioning the Wikipedia was to congratulate it on its 100,000 article: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/22/0258226&mode=thread . Which was unfortunate, since by then many of the topics I feel most qualified to write on (Roman Emperors, Tolkienalia) had already been covered, often in greater depth than I myself could bring to the subject. But that was good, though, since the high-quality of both writing and scholarship shown on many of the articles here has taken the evanescent good-will I've felt for dozens of other online, collaborative projects and transformed it into a serious and tangible effort to contribute as much to the encyclopedia as I could. And it certainly helps that I have selfish reasons for wanting the Wikipedia to succeed. The first, and most obvious, one of these is the benefit I get from having a free, high-quality encyclopedia available to me whenever I need to look up a quick fact. But I think the real reason I like to contribute is so that I can file and later easily retrieve the many bits of (to me at least) fascinating trivia I come across in my readings.

Bio

For the last 5 1/2 years I've lived in the Bay Area, coming here first as a student and then working for the last 3 1/2 years at one of the bigger software companies in the valley as a programmer. Though most of my peers went to work for start-ups at the time of our graduation, I chose the conservative route and the closest I came to the dotcom hype of the era was cashing out some of my company's inflated stock options so that I could pay off my student loans. When not adding to my employer's market cap I pursue various literary interests and hope, despite my sagging 401k, to have enough money to retire and see to them full-time in the next several years.

Work

My interests include contemprorary American writers of literary fiction, with a specialization in future Nobel laureate Philip Roth. Other interests include intellectual history, weblogs, and curiosities of Internet culture such as trolling.

Goals for First Half of 2003

• complete the article for Philip Roth (mostly bio information) and provide synopsises for most of his novels