Hello! You can call me Vern.

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 90's, where my older brother and I would go over to the neighbor's house to play Battletoads! in Battlemaniacs or watch an episode of The Simpsons, which our parents wouldn't let us watch. We moved to Sacramento when I was 8 years old, and lived there throughout high school. It was at this time that I started writing short stories and poetry, which were about as good as you would expect from a 14 year old emo kid living in the suburbs.

In college, I switched my major to English after realizing that becoming a psychiatrist meant needing to take (and pass) both science and math classes. I planned to go straight to grad school and teach, less for stereotypical reasons and more because I actually really enjoy teaching and mentoring. But my then-girlfriend (now wife) encouraged me to find work in the industry first before going down the teaching route.

I remember being parked at some place downtown, eating fast food in my car after a night of drinking. Right in front of us was a brightly lit ad for some energy drink. I don't remember the ad itself, but I do remember saying disparaging things about the tagline on the ad. That's when she said, "Well, you could write it better."

You can typically find me playing butler to two small children, aged 5.5 and 2.5. They take up the majority of my free time, whether they're riding bikes and scooters at the park, bossing me around in play time, or demanding snacks and cups of milk.

I enjoy cooking as a hobby, but it's hard to qualify something you do for survival as a hobby. Most weeknights, it's the usual rotations of easy-to-make meals that balance foods I know the kids will eat with slightly more adventurous things (like adding spinach to spaghetti).

But when I find a new recipe I want to try or have an event or potluck to cook for, I enjoy the craft of cooking and creating something for people to enjoy. Lately, I've been cooking with my kids a lot more which has doubled my normal cleanup and tripled my bonding time being able to teach what I know about food. This has not made them more likely to eat the food we actually cook, but we still enjoy doing it.

I've also played video games my entire life, another passion I'm sharing with my girls. My eldest daughter and I have played through all of Princess Peach: Showtime! together, and she's recently enjoyed talking to Pokémon friends in Pokémon Pokopia. By most standards, I'm considered an oldhead in gaming circles, having been around long enough to know firsthand why Discord calls their communities "Servers."

I've been a long-time Final Fantasy XIV player, which has mostly been casual but I've recently dived into the more difficult endgame content. This includes optimizing my performance in highly difficult boss fights called "Savage Raids," which results in a percentile score comparing my performance against everyone else who has fought that same boss playing the same class as me.

It feels odd to include this on my website, but I'm actually really proud of these accomplishments. But also this is my website, and this is the about section. I can write whatever I want, right?

And if I'm not doing any of these things, I've somehow found time to sneak away to my local climbing gym to do some bouldering. I'm generally not the most athletic, but bouldering satisfies both the need for tangible accomplishment and the innate urge to climb the really tall thing.