Tip of the day: Keep your beard clean; if you're lucky you have a good helper for this. Thanks to Jim Race for photodocumentation of proper beard-cleaning procedure.

More pictures of me racing with the AFM (all racing photos by Gary Rather except as indicated):

• In turn 10 at Sears Point during the 750 production race on 26 May, 2002
• In third place behind Joe Pardo (#728) and Frank Mazur (#10) on the first lap of the 250 production race at Sears Point, 15 April, 2001
• A quality to strive for as a racer or as a racing photographer is consistency, lap after lap after lap (note the orange cones in the background). Those pictures, and this one showing me earlier in the turn are from the 250 production race at Sears Point on 15 April, 2001.
• Only slightly visible, running in second place between Frank Mazur (#8) and Paul Somerville (#311) in turn 4 at Buttonwillow, on lap 2 of the 250 production race, March 26, 2000
• A split second later, still on lap 2 of the 250 production race in Buttonwillow's turn 4 ahead of Paul Somerville (#311) and Kevin Scott (#680), March 26, 2000
• In the lead, probably on lap 3 or 4 of the 250 production race in turn 4 at Buttonwillow; Frank Mazur (#8) is running second behind me in this picture, and the order didn't change. March 26, 2000
• With John Prelock (#357) in turn 3a (during the 250 superbike race?) at Sears Point, August, 1999
• With Kelly Winkelbauer (#462) in turn 2 during the 250 production race at Sears Point, August, 1999 (photo by Jack Heringer)
• entering turn 4 during the 250 production race at Sears Point, August, 1999 (photo by Bill Lepior)
• With John Prelock (#357) in turn 3a at Sears Point, July, 1999
• Entering turn 3 on the first lap of the 250 production race at Buttonwillow, March, 1999 (photo by Mo Kaluta)
• In turn 3.333 in the 250 production race at Buttonwillow, March, 1999 (photo by Mo Kaluta)
• Line art by Steve Chan from the previous photo
• With Brian Bartlow (#29) in turn 9 ("The Arc," also called "The Sweeper") in the 250 production race at Buttonwillow, March, 1999
• One photo and another photo taken near the entrance to Sears Point's turn 11, August, 1998
  (probably taken in morning practice rather than a race)
• In turn 2 at Sears Point with Darren Slawecki (#678), July, 1998 (250 Superbike race)
• In turn 3a at Sears Point, July, 1998 (250 Production race)
• In turn 3.333 with Chris McGrail (#886) and Paul Somerville (#373 -- now #311) at Buttonwillow, October, 1997
• In the old turn 7 at Sears Point, June, 1997
• In the old turn 8 at Thunderhill, April, 1997

Unfortunately I don't know who deserves the photo credit for this very nice aerial image of Thunderhill Raceway. The effects of perspective aren't terribly obvious in the shot until you realize that it makes turn 1 (the left-hander at the far end of the long straight) look almost as tight as turn 14 (the old turn 9, the right-hander that joins the longest straight at the confluence of a bunch of asphalt access roads). The new part of the track (on the right side of the photo) was really very new when this picture was taken, and the asphalt joining it to the old section looks like it wasn't quite complete (the areas around turn 13 and the old turn 8). I stole this image from the Silicon Valley Triumph Web.

Here is another image of Thunderhill from the air, probably taken in the same flight on the same day, from the looks of it. This one is stolen from Thunderhill's web site.

Here's what Sears Point looks like from the air (photo by Russ Roslewski).

Anyone know where I can get a similar image of Buttonwillow?

If you like, you can read a race report. They tend to be longer and more interesting when I do well, shorter and terser when I suck:

• Buttonwillow, October 21, 2001
• Sears Point, September 23, 2001
• Sears Point, August 19, 2001
• Thunderhill, July 22, 2001
• Sears Point, June 3, 2001
• Thunderhill, May 13, 2001
• Sears Point, April 15, 2001
• Buttonwillow, March 11, 2001
• Buttonwillow, October 22, 2000
• Thunderhill, September 24, 2000 (for some reason my longest race report ever!)
• Sears Point, August 20, 2000
• Sears Point, July 16, 2000
• Thunderhill, June 18, 2000 (incomplete rough draft)
• Sears Point, May 28, 2000
• Sears Point, April 23, 2000
• Buttonwillow, March 26, 2000
• Thunderhill, October 24, 1999
• Buttonwillow, September 26, 1999
• A single report summarizing Thunderhill, June 20, 1999; Sears Point, July 18, 1999; and Sears Point, August 29, 1999.
• Sears Point, May 30, 1999
• Sears Point, April 4, 1999
• Buttonwillow, March 7, 1999
• Buttonwillow, October 11, 1998 (very rough draft)
• Thunderhill, September 13, 1998
• Sears Point, August 2, 1998
• Sears Point, July 12, 1998 (or you can read the less complete but flashier version that appeared in the July-August '98 issue of Sport-Twin News)
• Buttonwillow, October 12, 1997
• Thunderhill, September 9, 1997 (4-hour endurance race and sprint races)
• Thunderhill, April 20, 1997 (really just the abandoned beginning of a report, with a condensed e-mail summary at the end)
• My first race report ever, Sears Point, June 16, 1996
• Not really a race report at all, but a report on attending my first track school at Laguna Seca, April 18, 1994

Robert's .plan

What I mostly look like, in case you care.

Interesting stuff:

• Sex (and people who deal with it informatively)
  • Coalition for Positive Sexuality, a volunteer organization dedicated to providing information to teens and to advocating for teens' open access to information and reproductive health care.
  • mouthorgan, whatever that means, is a site with some decent writing and good thought on sex-related topics. I found the site through one of Mary Anne Mohanraj's pages.
  • Clean Sheets Magazine, a very decent web 'zine with a nice mix of info and erotica. For myself, I like the erotica there better than the info, but I'm sure the info is informative to some. I'm glad it's there.
• Drugs
  • The Lycaeum's drug information archives
  • The Lycaeum's archives of Paranoia's old drug information server
• Rock and roll (and other music)
  • Not This Tuesday Night, my jazz combo.
  • The still somewhat ragged-around-the-edges web presence of Double Funk Crunch, my former funk and disco band. I ended up leaving the band because it got so popular that I couldn't keep up with the gigging schedule. I love playing with them, but I love many other things, too.
  • A band I played with once (so far) on Halloween, 1997. [Ed. note: Actually, that only USED to be LMNO's site; the site has since been co-opted by Double Funk Crunch, the funk and disco band founded by me and some LMNO members and other guests.] Was that me jamming with D-Mo, or was it the piano teacher of your childhood nightmares?
  • A band I've never played with, but whose members I've played with
  • An outdated link to my ex-piano teacher's latest album, and a good-last-time-I-checked link to a review of a gig he played near his home town.
  • Marketing hype on my new keyboard.
  • More information about my new keyboard.
  • My QS[6.1/7/7.1/8/8.1] user bank as of about 1 May, 2000, in sysex format. Some of the programs in this bank use samples from the Vintage Keys QCard and some use samples from the Jazz Piano QCard.
  • My favorite (so far) piano patch for my QS8 (also works on the 6.1, 7, 7.1, and 8.1), in sysex format.
  • (Nearly) the same piano patch in Unisyn format.
  • My work-in-progress Rhodes Mark I Stage 73 patch in sysex format for the QS series, using samples from the Vintage Keys QCard in slot A.
  • General and specific information about one of my old keyboards, a Rhodes Stage 73 Mark I piano.
  • Another of my old keyboards, a Yamaha CP-70B stage grand, doesn't seem to have much web share devoted to it.
  • My third old keyboard, a WuliTzer ``Electronic'' Piano model 200A, has a little web share, but not much. The best site I've seen is the WurliTzer Electric [sic] Piano Archive.
  • Marc Sabatella's excellent Jazz Improvisation Primer
• Lifeline Cat Rescue
• Adbusters Culture Jammers Headquarters
• NSA employee's security manual (with thanks to Don Aingworth)
• NetBSD: A free, high-quality OS
• The Chemical Scorecard, for information about chemicals you're exposed to due to stationary-source polluters.

Time to preach. Here are some things I try to work toward in my life; my personal belief is that we would all do well to apply them.
The world will be a better place ...

• if I take the time to become very skilled at something that requires discipline
• if I buy less stuff and live more modestly
• if I eat less meat and more vegetables
• if I sincerely ask people for their opinions
• if I choose not to reproduce
• if I buy or barter for things from individuals and small organizations instead of big, profit-motivated companies
• if I own fewer things I can't maintain or repair myself
• if I go out of my way to learn what my options are --- the TV, the newspapers, and other mainstream media are marginal sources at best for this info; the net gets more and more marginal every day, too
• if I acknowledge that I have real choices, and behave accordingly
• if I listen carefully to others
• if I don't give in to drug tests or other invasions of my privacy
• if I buy things made by people whose working and living conditions I would like for myself
• if I don't equip myself to do violence
• if I don't confuse my job with my life
• if I learn to communicate better with people
• if I act as if I can make a difference, even if I'm in a small minority
• if I respect others' rights to behave in ways I wouldn't choose for myself
• if I openly enjoy eroticism

• I drink plenty of water
• I love generously and accept the love of others graciously
• I speak the truth, and put it as simply and clearly as honesty permits

Good sources of worthwhile, controversial information and thought-provoking discourse:

• Rainforest Action Network is a site with lots of good information about rainforests, what's happening to them these days, why, and what we can do about it. Try not to be put off by the home page that looks like it's trying to hide information from you by giving no explanations longer than a word or two of what you're about to click on. It gets better; click on something and go from there.
• Why Christians Suck is a site with lots of good historical and biblical information. Some of the writing there takes a tone I don't agree with, namely that superstition amounts to mental instability or imbalance. On the contrary, it's sad but true that superstition is one of the oldest, most tenacious, most stable states of human consciousness. Among other things, superstition is a proven and well-honed tool for getting lots of people to work together toward results so evil they could never be justified any other way. Superstition and denial, nasty though they often are, are very different from what people traditionally mean by ``crazy.'' Certainly one can be led to imbalance using superstition or denial as a starting point, but they aren't the same. The Secular Web and American Atheists are somewhat more moderate sites with some info along similar lines.
• Operation Clambake is a well-done site devoted to debunking Scientology and Dianetics.

If you're interested, you can take a look at the 2004 Motorcycle Racer Résumé I put together just for fun, or even my latest Day Job Résumé.

Papers I've written:

• A paper entitled Register Promotion by Partial Redundancy Elimination of Loads and Stores that I wrote with several colleagues in the compiler group at SGI. The paper was presented in Montreal at PLDI '98.
• A paper entitled Strength Reduction via SSAPRE that I wrote with several colleagues in the compiler group at SGI. I presented the paper at the 1998 Compiler Construction conference in Lisbon.
• A paper entitled A New Algorithm for Partial Redundancy Elimination based on SSA Form that I wrote with several colleagues in the compiler group at SGI. The paper appeared in the proceedings of the 1997 ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, pages 273-286. There is a technical error in the running example which will be corrected in the journal version of the paper (draft of the journal version available here). Also, there seems to be a LaTeX bug in the version I use on my home machine; things are located slightly incorrectly in Figure 1. I will replace this file with a version typeset elsewhere when I get a chance, but it's probably better to look at the draft journal version anyway.
• A paper entitled Global Price Updates Help. I wrote this paper with my Ph.D. advisor Andrew Goldberg, and it's about the theory behind a technique for speeding up push-relabel implementations that solve max-flow and min-cost flow problems. This paper appeared in the SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics, 10(4), pages 551-572 (1997).
• A paper entitled An Efficient Cost Scaling Algorithm for the Assignment Problem. I wrote this paper with my Ph.D. advisor Andrew Goldberg, and it's about an assignment problem solver I wrote with Andrew's participation. This paper appeared in Mathematical Programming, 71(2), pages 153-178 (1995).
• My thesis, entitled Solving Unweighted and Weighted Bipartite Matching Problems in Theory and Practice