The very brief autobiography of
Brian Habing

I was born on October 6, 1970 in Rockford, Illinois. I still go back to visit at least once a year because my family still lives there (or nearby). Rockford has the distinction of consistently being near the bottom of the Money magazine rankings and yet in the same year it was listed last by them it was chosen the most typical city in the US by PBS! I went to Hallstrom Elementary School, Wilson Middle School and was in the Class of 1988 at Auburn High School. In addition to working at Aunt Mary's in Cherryvale and Magic Waters when I was in high school, I was also on Staff at Camp Lowden BSA for six great summers.

From Rockford I moved to Champaign-Urbana to attend the University of Illinois. I got my BS and MS degrees in the department of Mathematics and my PhD in the department of Statistics. I did my research there under the direction of Professor Bill Stout. Somewhere in there I also found time to be a manager at Garcia's Pizza on Lincoln Ave. for four years, and worked at Comic Cavalcade for several more (back when it was in Johnstown Center). More importantly, Champaign is where I met Geeia, and married her on June 5, 1993.

After 10 years of school, I finally graduated and had to enter the real world with a real job. And so, I find myself in the beautiful city of Columbia, South Carolina as an Associate Professor of Statistics at the University of South Carolina. In addition to teaching Statistics courses, I also do research in the area of Psychometrics.

As far as hobbies and interests, my major vice used to be trying to finish off a run of the Avengers. But since the three I needed were too expensive (and I imagined the rest turning yellow in their boxes), I moved on to trying to get one page of original art from all the issues up to Annual 10 (twenty-four down, a bit over 200 to go). I keep up with the new issues and check in over at Avengers Forever whenever I get the time as well. I also get together once a week with a group of friends for a session of D&D or some other RPG. And finally, I maintain a Poem of the Week Page.

As for other favorite things, my favorite music group is U2. I also have three or more CDs each sitting on my desk by Billy Joel, Norah Jones, Alanis Morissette, and Pink Floyd. My favorite work of fiction is Watchmen and my favorite sci-fi/fantasy author is Glen Cook. As far as books outside the fiction aisle, I'd have to recommend The Bhagavad-Gita, The 100, and (in spite of its errors) The Best Loved Poems of the American People. My two favorite TV shows of all time are probably the Simpsons and Mash. Currently, there aren't a whole lot of shows I follow regularly, but NCIS and Bones are two. The Mentalist has been pretty good, and its a shame House is on opposite NCIS. On the re-run circuit, I'm glad they've put out the full series of both Dark Angel and Brisco on DVD. Of the 450+ movies and videos I've rated on the IMDB.com, the following got a 9 or 10:

Finally, two of my favorite places to visit are Eagle River Wisconsin where my entire family goes every summer, and New York City, in part because the Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the neatest places on earth.

That's probably far more than you wanted to know, so I'll let you go now. Click here to return to my page of Links.