About "I am legion"
Welcome. I'm geoff willcher. This website tells you about interests we may have in common. My interests focus on work, training, consulting, sports, science, current events and recreation.
Work -- Usability Engineering -- I want to make software safe and fun for people to use. Ever since an Industrial Psych class, I have felt that there is no excuse for bad design to compel people to have frustrating and fatal experiences with engineered products such as software, airplanes and others.
Consulting -- I teach negotiation, anti-consumerism, human-computer interaction, psychology, technical writing and related topics on a part time basis or consulting basis. I'm teaching negotiation at BCC. Have taught international negotiation with Inter Fas, for Exxon-Mobile.
Sports -- I practice Bando martial arts, a set of Burmese martial arts systems. I am a 7th level black belt and senior student of Dr. U Maung Gyi. I'm decent at pool and enjoy ping pong. I have a regular on-going physical training program of weights, areobics and flexibility. Very interested in fitness training to promote athletic performance.
Science -- Evolution, complexity science, memetics, history of technology, and more. After reviewing research, I'm a strong proponent of Plasma Cosmology and think that the Big Bang theory has been fatally flawed for many years.
Current Events -- I'm outraged by the Bush administration, the rise of evangelical christianity, the predatory nature of religious extremism and the failure of our government to respond intelligently to global warming caused by human factors. I've organized the East Side Brights and belong to other secular groups in this area. I'm reading deeply into history to understand the real and hidden people, agreements and organizations that run our world.
Recreation -- Always looking for friends and new relationships. Living in the northwest, I enjoy many out doors activities: hiking, climbing, bike riding. I wish I could play the flute better and have pretentions to do water colors.
Writing -- I'm a big sci-fi fan and am working of a couple of novels. Have a few rejection slips. I've been published in some martial arts magazines and had a poem --Remember, Remember on the 7th of November -- published in a local paper chastizing the Bush administration. Poem was based on the poem quoted in V for Vendetta which is rapidly becomming my favorite movie.
Education / Teaching -- Earned a doctorate in cognitive psychology that i put to work complaining about usability in software. Lots of training in UI design, usability, management, and software. Have taught UI Design; Human Computer Interaction and Technical Writing as well as various psychology courses.
Do I have a mission statement? Interesting thing for a person.
To find ways to reduce the sources of error in people's lives so that they can be more effective. In software this translates into: make software save for people.
From Bando: As no one nation has a monopoly of the sunlight; no one race, religion, system, or person has a monopoly of the truth.
From General Systems Theory: I seek the underlying order within chaos to find the unity within the diversity of life, events and objects in our world.