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About Mike_MacLeod
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Epinions.com ID:
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Mike_MacLeod
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Member Since:
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Oct 14 '99
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Activity Summary
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Reviews Written: 1
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Member Visits: 29
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Total Visits: 402
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About Mike_MacLeod
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Mike MacLeod grew up in the San Francisco suburbs, just slightly too young to participate in the Summer of Love of the late 1960s. In high school (1967-1970), he did become a rock and roll drummer and guitarist and played with numerous high school groups, which led to a subsequent interest in progressive rock (like ELP, Pink Floyd, UK, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Rush), virtuoso guitarists, romantic classical music, and some 20th century impressionist music. Currently he does MIDI composition with Logic Audio Platinum and various MIDI modules. During this time he qualified for Mensa, the society for pretentious people who are good at taking "IQ" tests, where he tested out at an "IQ" of 176.
After high school he studied radio and television production (after starting a radio station at his Pacifica, California high school) and English, receiving A.A. degrees in both from Skyline College in San Bruno.
After college, he held a variety of unpleasant jobs, such as messenger, bank teller, security guard, and merchant seaman, before settling into a career as a technical writer in California's Silicon Valley in 1977. He is still writing technical documentation, currently for Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microelectronics.
Mike was always poking around the fringes of things, and wound up with a margined silver account in a Swiss bank when he was 19 (1971). A year later he was one of the founding members of the California Libertarian Party, and one of the first to leave the California Libertarian Party in a snit. He renounced political discussion in 1990, unless you'd like him to write about some political perspective or other. He has continued to study stock and commodity markets over the years, as well as Austrian economics.
In the mid 1970s he got a chance to spend a month in Europe, travelling from place to place to see, among other things, every Vermeer painting he could find.
In the late 1970s he became interested in martial arts and studied Filipino stick and blade fighting (Cabales Serrada Escrima) with Mike Inay in San Jose for a year. This was about as effective as five years at a suburban strip-mall karate class. He's now too fat and old to move well, but he still collects edged weapons as a hobby.
In the early 1980s he became somewhat despondent over the state of his affairs, despite the financial success of working as a technical writer for some of the most well-known companies of the time. He began an ongoing exploration of himself and the universe, beginning with an intensive engagement with the Church of Scientology. This proved to be very useful, but he left the CofS several years later for the usual reasons and continued therapy with other post-Scientologists.
Later he became immersed in the arts and practices of the Sufis, eventually becoming initiated as a Naqshbandi Sufi in 1992. At the same time he began an intensive study of the Enneagram of Personality Fixation, and hosted and taught Enneagram theory at classes given with a friend in Menlo Park.
He continues to study a number of subjects that interest him - human and animal biology, chemistry, martial arts, astronomy and astrophysics, cosmology, transpersonal psychology and philosophy, music theory, vernacular architecture, cinematography, bison, lemurs, computer software, genetic programming, artificial intelligence, electronic music, cooking, intensive farming, and reading the backs of cereal boxes at breakfast.
He has written fiction, nonfiction, and poetry since his high school years and is currently working on the science-fiction novel "Promethea", which ranges from fin-de-sicle Vienna to the 21st century.
Some other statistics: he is a 4w5 in the Enneagram system of Personality Fixation, an INFX in the Meyers-Briggs personality analysis scheme, at least an OTV completion equivalent in Scientology's scheme, and a Cancer with Leo rising and a Balsamic Moon in Cancer in natal horoary astrology. He's also an extreme "owl", or "night person"; it's now 5:27AM, and about time for bed.
Mike
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