Mike Caprio mik3cap@gmail.com	Introduction	Professional	Personal	Writing	mikecapr.io	Join my Patreon
Mike Caprio mik3cap@gmail.com	Restaurant Reviews				Kyria Abrahams

An Introduction to My Web Site

Hi there. My name is Mike.

Everybody's got a home page, and most of them are solely there to feed somebody's ego or to be a toy or curiosity. I'd like my web site to actually be purposeful, both to myself and to other folks. When used properly, the two things that the web does really well are communicating and organizing information. This site attempts to do both, with a focus on myself as the subject matter. "Everything You've Always Wanted To Know About Mike Caprio, But Were Afraid To Ask."

Professional Info

When I file taxes, I call myself a "Software Engineer". I primarily write software but I can do a heck of a lot more than that, and I usually do. I'm familiar with every major software development technology at this point, and I should be making something like $300 an hour (as much as a corporate lawyer) given that my level of productivity and work output makes billions of dollars of value for my employers (as is the case with most software engineers) but, you know, workers get exploited. Software engineers just get exploited the most when you compare their salaries to the real value they create and the work they're expected to accomplish.

Check my LinkedIn for more details. I've worked on a number of social good projects on the side, like founding the NASA International Space Apps Challenge in New York City and some data journalism projects. I'm also a member of the StartupBus alumni network, a global group of innovators out to change the world and disrupt the status quo to make life better for us all.

Personal Info

Begin at the beginning.

I was born on August 22nd, 1974. I lived in New Haven, CT until about third grade (1982), then grew up in North Branford, CT until I left for college (1992). I went to Worcester Polytechnic Institute and began study there as a Physics major. Halfway through my Sophomore year I realized I wasn't cut out for the life of the physicist, and I started pursuing Computer Science instead. I eventually graduated with a BSCS.

My parents (Mike and Laurel - yes, I am Mike Jr.) retired to Arizona a few years back and are living it up in their dream home. My mom retired in the early 2000s, her last position was as director of human resources at Softwax, a peer to peer software company. But she's now selling real estate in Green Valley and working with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to raise money for blood cancer research (she and dad run a 150 person pasta and meatballs dinner and auction every year).

My dad retired in 2013, he worked for around three decades at United Illuminating, and he is currently pursuing an active career as a star of stage, screen, and radio. He's now on the Arizona-Utah Board of SAG-AFTRA. All of my friends seem to think that my parents are totally cool, and I tend to agree with them nearly all of the time.

My older sister (Rose) is currently living in Queens, NY and works in the fashion industry. She's extremely talented, she earned two degrees in Fine Arts and Multimedia, then went further in her education at FIT and she is now working as a textile designer. We both seriously enjoy cooking and hosting dinner parties.

I'm mostly Italian, with a little Irish and German mixed in somewhere. But I was raised in about as Italian a fashion as you can get, with a large and caring immediate and extended family supporting me every step of the way. We celebrated with around 30 people on the major holidays, and had 100 or so over for the annual Easter Egg Hunt.

My family is Catholic, but they don't practice. I've never been much of a religious type myself, and though I made it through Communion, I never got Confirmed. I have no religious beliefs in any traditional sense, but there are things that I believe should be revered and honored, and of course, celebrated constantly.

So what do I believe in? Well, I'm no hedonist, but I think the most important things in life revolve around eating, sex, and writing (in no particular order). I may be an Existentialist, but I seem to keep stumbling into Buddhist territory by accident. I believe in Hygge.

Let's see, what else... I got hit by a truck. I came out with a badly broken left leg, but no other real damage except for the emotional scars. I had another run-in with a 16 year old less than a mile from my residence on September 10th, 2001 - he blew right through a stop sign. sigh

I picked up the nickname "Zen" from being seen in the Wedge (a common area between two dorms at WPI) with a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. I read it for my introductory philosophy course, and I really got into what he had to say... with so much ardor in fact that I became known to one and all as a philosopher, which really fits me well anyway.

Isaac Asimov once wrote: "You don't need schooling to be a philosopher; just an active mind and experience with life." I believe in that sentiment quite strongly - that philosophy is an inherent part of us all, and comes out every time we ask ourselves a question we can't answer. For the most part, I am a humanist and a believer in balance, and somewhat (though not completely) in Eastern mysticism.

Writing

My friend Seann and I often talk about seeking out patrons for our various artistic activities. With the help of Patreon, I'm now accepting patronage from persons who find my site and would like to donate monies towards my artistic works. I used to solicit for my writing, noe I'm working on dramatic readings of the works of Clark Ashton Smith.

Please be generous and show me your appreciation and encouragement, and thank you for your support.

So, a little bit about my writing.

I am what I write. I write what I feel. I have a drive to express myself, and a small amount of talent that lets me do so fairly well. Everything I have ever put pen to paper for has a small part of me inside of it; every poem, every essay, every love letter. Consequently, I've adopted the tendency to lose my identity every once in a while, which can sometimes result in embarrassing reality checks or in bouts of existential angst and general poutiness. Most of the time I'm not so tempermental. Really! And if you believe that, you might enjoy some of my writing; this section contains a selection of my works since the late 1980s / early 1990s.

New writing - This page contains all my latest stuff and gets updated fairly regularly. Some prose, some poetry, some stuff in between.
My 2001 Hawaii journal - I went to Hawaii in April of 2001, and this is a daily journal of the two weeks I spent there.
lessons - Some personal writing I started putting together really late one night. It's not really a journal... but I think it will end up being something of a touchstone for me.
My .plan - If you're familiar with UNIX operating systems, you may know what a .plan file is; this page was my .plan file while I was attending school, and grew over time to the size it is today.
Prometheus / Epimetheus columns (1993) - First published in WPI's weekly student newspaper, Tech News, formerly known as Newspeak, these columns are mostly commentary with a little philosophy thrown in for good measure.
Older writing - I continue to dig through old files and other documents from my early high school and college days, and I keep finding bits and throwing them into this file. I'll eventually get a bunch more stuff put in here as I convert it to electronic format.

Art

I took an art class at the Worcester Art Museum in the Spring of 2001 - "Life Drawing", learning how to draw the human anatomy. It was very neat, and I'm going to be scanning in and linking to all my best stuff. Pictures down for a bit.

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