For about a decade I was one of the morlocks responsible for the University of Michigan's web infrastructure. But now I'm a full-time PhD student in Linguistics working with Steven Abney and Pam Beddor.
I'm starting my third year of graduate school and I still find myself interested in every branch of linguistics but one (I'm not telling which one). However, I'm primarily interested in phonetics, phonology, speech perception, speech synthesis, and speech recognition. Currently I have two separate projects underway: an ultrasound investigation of Montana Salish articulation and a small concatenative speech synthesis project to test the hypothesis that coarticulation is essential information (signal) and not mere noise as many speech recognition and perception researchers like to insist. The latter of these is my qualifying research project and, as such, is the only thing standing between me and candidacy.
Back when I had leisure time I could be found riding my bicycle long distances in outlandish, stretchy garments. I used to play electric guitar and bodhrán in a band of indeterminate genre. But grad school is hard, parenting is harder, and I have no time for such idle pursuits these days.
My purple house is, for an inanimate object, rather demanding of my time (more so than, say, my aquarium but less so than my daughter).