engineers by day
Rob and Anna Kirkenhof are definitely worth a post in themselves.
At first glance they appear to be your typical late thirtysomething, upper middle class Bay Area engineer couple. Anna creates, designs, and tests medical devices--defibrillators and other such lifesaving machines. Rob does metrics, scam detection, and all sorts of other crazy math stuff for an adult dating site--one you are likely already familiar with if you have ever sent received a file via MegaUpload or Rapidshare and been startled by a short video of a leggy blonde in a plaid short skirt, loudly welcoming you and any friends and co-workers within earshot to a site that is, um, clearly not MegaUpload or Rapidshare. I think they are both Harvey Mudd grads. Like most engineers I've met, they are staid, easygoing, rational people, the kind of folk you'd make small talk with around the water cooler, always up for some interesting conversation about mathematical theorems or the effects of vitamins on your diet, occasionally voicing their frustration with bureaucracy or other vocational obstacles. They live comfortably in a fairly large Pacific Lodge-style house (affectionately known as Alpine Butterfly Lodge, or ABL) with their friends Dylan, a PhD student, and Dawn (Cormac's girlfriend), another health care technology engineer. To many people, undoubtedly, they are just Rob and Anna from work. In their affable confidence they seem no different from the plethora of other technocrat post-yuppies who made some smart career moves early on and now enjoy a pleasant, comfortable yoga-and-organic-vegetables lifestyle.
Which is pretty much the impression I had of them until I wandered into their home library, browsing through meticulously labelled hardwood shelves filled end to end with fantasy and sci-fi novels, and saw the naked Harry Potter photos.
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At first glance they appear to be your typical late thirtysomething, upper middle class Bay Area engineer couple. Anna creates, designs, and tests medical devices--defibrillators and other such lifesaving machines. Rob does metrics, scam detection, and all sorts of other crazy math stuff for an adult dating site--one you are likely already familiar with if you have ever sent received a file via MegaUpload or Rapidshare and been startled by a short video of a leggy blonde in a plaid short skirt, loudly welcoming you and any friends and co-workers within earshot to a site that is, um, clearly not MegaUpload or Rapidshare. I think they are both Harvey Mudd grads. Like most engineers I've met, they are staid, easygoing, rational people, the kind of folk you'd make small talk with around the water cooler, always up for some interesting conversation about mathematical theorems or the effects of vitamins on your diet, occasionally voicing their frustration with bureaucracy or other vocational obstacles. They live comfortably in a fairly large Pacific Lodge-style house (affectionately known as Alpine Butterfly Lodge, or ABL) with their friends Dylan, a PhD student, and Dawn (Cormac's girlfriend), another health care technology engineer. To many people, undoubtedly, they are just Rob and Anna from work. In their affable confidence they seem no different from the plethora of other technocrat post-yuppies who made some smart career moves early on and now enjoy a pleasant, comfortable yoga-and-organic-vegetables lifestyle.
Which is pretty much the impression I had of them until I wandered into their home library, browsing through meticulously labelled hardwood shelves filled end to end with fantasy and sci-fi novels, and saw the naked Harry Potter photos.
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