User:Smack

I am currently 21 years old, and a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. I'm in my first year researching electrical engineering, specifically microelectromechanical systems. I first edited an article in March of 2003, and started contributing on a regular basis in the wee days of May.

I haven't contributed actively in a little while. If you want my opinion on something, or my help with anything, please contact me through one of the channels listed below.

My nickname is a slang term, at least in Irvine, California, for a somewhat cocky smart person. I don't like it very much anymore, but I don't want to bother changing it.

My email address is ivg in the immediate vicinity of berkeley very small spot edu email-address harvesting software must die. ('92604' is my ZIP code. When I got this email address, Yahoo suggested that I be either smack16 or smack17, so I decided to go with a number I could remember.) You may also AIM at brainybuffoon, YIM me at smack92604, or ICQ me at 26220039. (I don't let people add me to their ICQ contact lists without authorization. If you request to add me, please mention Wikipedia.)

I've been too lazy to look at the the steady stream of obscure Wikipolicy that seems to be an inevitable byproduct of Wikiwork. If I break any rules, though, please do tell me.

Whenever I see an article, think that it needs a lot of work, and think that I'm capable of performing this work with at least an average level of competence, I put it on my To-do list.

I've written an essay. I've called it "A rewrite a day keeps the critics at bay".

WikiProjects for which I've signed up:
 * WikiProject Illustration
 * WikiProject Knots (inactive recently, but I want to try to make some knot illustrations)
 * WikiProject Disambiguation

Some contributions of note
Here I list articles which I significantly helped to write (this usually means that I wrote a pageful or more, as seen at a decently high screen resolution). This list notably ignores cleanup work.
 * Philmont Scout Ranch
 * Kurtz (Heart of Darkness) (this one doesn't quite meet my length criteria, but I like it)
 * List of BSA rank requirements (a rather shameful article)
 * Tent
 * Portable stove
 * First Age, Fëanor and other Tolkien-related stuff which I've since forsworn
 * Campfire (initially How to light a fire)
 * Season
 * Hiking
 * Boy Scouts of America
 * Jefferson Davis (refactored from a timeline)
 * Colonial History of the United States
 * Test (student assessment)
 * Archaeology
 * Peterhof
 * Atomic orbital (begun at Electron orbital, then cut and pasted)
 * Radioactive decay
 * Giuseppe Garibaldi (mass of material rewritten and/or moved to Italian unification)
 * Thermal oxidation
 * Deal-Grove model
 * Etching (microfabrication)
 * Evaporation (deposition)
 * Chemical vapor deposition

Images that I have authored and uploaded
All images, except for some technical diagrams containing text, are hosted on Wikimedia Commons. The diagrams were created using Micrografx Designer. Just ask me if you want a modified version of anything.

Relicensing nonsense
I was recently informed about a rather ironic situation. We all thought that our contributions to Wikipedia were freely released, but there's a rather hairy issue involving noncompatibility of the vaunted GFDL with other licenses used by other allegedly free information repositories. It's a bloody mess, so in an effort to resolve my small part of it once and for all, I'm attaching this little note to my user page.

List of subpages, lest I forget:
 * /Essay
 * /To-do
 * /reply-here
 * /double-redirect