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Career
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I am a Senior Software Engineer at Intel ,
in Santa Clara, CA, working on 3D graphics, as you can see
in my resume. I manage a team in Russia, so I
often travel to there and Europe. I've been at Intel almost 8 years, previously
working on digital video architecture and compression algorithms. I am now
eligible for my sabbatical!
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Education
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I did my graduate work at Stanford (Decision
Analysis) and Columbia (Electrical Engineering). My undergrad days were
in Philadelphia at Drexel U., in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Want
details? How about graduation
pics?
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Creating Music
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I've played piano/keyboards for 15 years now, spending
a lot of time composing. Do you have pianist envy? ;-) My music is a mix
of new age and classical; melodic, intense, passionate. Listen
to some of my songs online.
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Listening to Music
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My listening tastes are clustered around a triangle of:
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Melodic Metal
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Yngwie
Malmsteen, Queensryche,
Scorpions
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Classical & Baroque
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Bach,
Beethoven, Mozart
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New Age
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Yanni,
Enya, George
Winston
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Supporting/Promoting Music
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I edit and publish Rising Force, an online digest
covering Neoclassical Metal. The genre can be described as classical or
classically-influenced music performed with the sound of modern-day metal.
Classical music that exemplified virtuosity on violin and piano can now
be heard with all the intensity and flawless technique of guitar and
keyboards.
Wolfgang Lives! (Mozart's 25th Symphony), by
Michael Harris
I've put this project on hold or a while due
to time constraints :(
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Home
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Since graduating, I've lived in the Philadelphia, Princeton, Phoenix,
Portland, and Palo Alto areas. Anyone see a
pattern? :-) What's next, Paris?
Actually, a couple years ago bought a townhouse in Mountain View,
neighboring Palo Alto. And, believe it or not, it's on Easy Street!
Know anyone looking for a great place to live? Please see my shared
housing ad. It has a really cool contemporary architecture,
comprised of 5 levels. Look here soon for pictures.
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Travel
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Aside from traveling to Russia on business, I take frequent trips for business
and pleasure, closing in on the quest for 1 million frequent flyer miles. I now
have enough to fly on the Concorde - this will probably be for my honeymoon
(whomever that will be with :). To me,
one of the best things about traveling is having someone to visit when
you get there. If you enjoy visitors, please let me know, and I will look
you up next time I'm in your area. Of course, you should feel free to look
me up if you're ever in the bay area, and
you might just find yourself invited to whatever my friends and I are up
to that day/night!
- The places I visit most often are Phoenix, Portland, Philadelphia, New
York, and Moscow. However, a great technique for seeing new places is
connecting in a different city each time. This is easily possible
because of various code share agreements, or just by using creative routing.
The next trip to Russia will be in the winter.
I'm planning to connect through a European city and spend some vacation.
Russia will be too cold for vacation then, and I haven't been to Europe in the
winter yet. Can anyone suggest
a good city to connect in at that time?
Take a photo tour of St. Petersburg, Russia.
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Family
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My parents live near Philadelphia, PA, and my sister goes to Penn State.
See some pictures of them.
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Friends
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Friends are your chosen family. Pictures!
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Art/Colors
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I appreciate art and decor that is rich and creative with vibrant color.
Favorite styles are impressionism, pointillism, realism, and surrealism.
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Performing Arts
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One
of the advantages of always living near big cities is the availability
of culture. I thoroughly enjoy theater, some opera and ballet, but most
of all musicals, my favorite being a tear-jerking performance of Les Misérables
on Broadway.
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Athletics
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Table tennis is my favorite sport to play, probably the one I'm best at.
Others include tennis, volleyball, and step aerobics. The only time you'll
find me watching sports on TV is the Olympics, especially the Ice Dancing.
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Ballroom Dancing
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I recently got back to ballroom dancing. This was great fun in undergrad,
and I've started taking group and private lessons again. My favorites
are the Tango, 2-step, not the country kind!) Salsa, and Swing. I'm
currently looking for a partner.
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Russian
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I am
fluent in Russian. Comes in handy when I have to call my team for weekly
status meetings, and the 11 hour time difference gives me an excuse to
come into work late :-)
I learned Russian while growing up in the Soviet Union, Kiev, precisely,
until I was 9. So I have the vocabulary of a 9 year old :)
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Humor/Wordplay
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After spending some time in Arizona, I now have a dry sense of humor. Ok,
I'm an incurable punster. I love to play with words. You can catch examples
of that all throughout my pages. I'm sure you've figured out that Sinphony
is a play on my last name, Sinyak, and symphony. The result evokes images
of symphonic passion yet with a sinful playfulness. I'm also taking an
improvisational comedy class which is incredibly fun. The hardest part is
learning how NOT to think and analyze the situation, but just to react
spontaneously.
Anagrams for my name are:
Check out some more of my favorite anagrams.
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Poetry
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My tastes in poetry are easy to understand - I like well crafted rhyme
and rhythm. Sonnets are genius, I really like the structure imposed by
it yet so craftfully filled by master wordsmiths.
I dabble in poetry myself, though seldom nowadays. Here's a small sample,
perhaps a chorus to a yet to be completed song, very simplistic, yet pretty
much my slogan:
Show me what I haven't
seen
Teach me what I do not know
Take me where I haven't been
And you'll sense the feelings grow
Can anyone compose
a better last line?
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Feminism
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I guess the origins of my support for feminism are rooted in seeing my
mother, an engineer in a male dominated field, get paid and treated as
a woman at work, rather than a mind. I feel it important to document my
views.
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Romance
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Romance is a spotlight, not a floodlight.
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Even the most precious gem needs a light to make it sparkle brilliantly.
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A diamond ring might be compared to the balance of love and life. Though
very beatiful and sparkling, the diamond will fall off your finger without
a solid band to set in. Likewise, while a band is technically a ring, it
will look quite unadorned without the diamond to accent it.
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Aspirations
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I am seriously evaluating the prospect of getting an MBA. This would require
taking two years off from a job that I love and spending an astronomical
sum on tuition. I think it's best to do it full time; I feel an MBA education
is very dependent on daily student interaction. Does anyone have any experience
with such a decision?