I have no control over people's perceptions of me at all and that's one of the things I decided very early on is that I can't control the way other people think of me. All I can do especially when it comes to my career is go out there and do cool unique kinds of things.

I never felt cool growing up. I was a bit of an outsider but I discovered theatre very early on which got me through.

'Sparkle' fell into my lap. I had heard a little bit about it that it was being redone in early 2011. I was just kind of like 'Oh that would be really cool ' and not really thinking too much about it and then it came through my agency. I read it I fell in love with the script and I went in to audition.

In early high school years I was pretty chubby and I spent a lot of time on my computer before it was cool to have a computer - because there was a time that was true. So that's where I developed my personality.

Over the eons I've been a fan of and sucker for each latest automated system to 'simplify' and 'bring order to' my life. Very early on this led me to the beautiful-and-doomed Lotus Agenda for my DOS computers and Actioneer for the early Palm.

I work on OpenBSD fulltime as the project leader. I set some directions increase communication between the developers and try to be involved in nearly every aspect of the base system.

In my teaching I enjoyed creating models to clearly communicate my thoughts.

I try to just communicate what I want done as clearly and simply as possible.

Few expected very much of Franklin Roosevelt on Inauguration Day in 1933. Like Barack Obama seventy-six years later he was succeeding a failed Republican president and Americans had voted for change. What that change might be Roosevelt never clearly said probably because he himself didn't know.

Today in America we are trying to prepare students for a high tech world of constant change but we are doing so by putting them through a school system designed in the early 20th Century that has not seen substantial change in 30 years.