I graduated in 2008 from the tiny Kenyon College with a major in Chinese and French but hardly any real experience in linguistics, and am hoping to remedy that through my work at LinguistList with the LL-Map project. I will be starting a graduate program in linguistics at the University of Kansas in the fall.
I first dipped my toes in the waters of computer programming with a class in C++ just this past spring, and since then I have begun playing around with Python. I can't do anything useful or special with either one yet, but I'd like to change that as I become more experienced in programming and in using these tools in my linguistic work. If all goes well, I might end up specializing in computational linguistics, although right now there are just so many subfields to choose from and I feel like a kid in a candy store...
My research interest du jour is to study ASL and be able to look at what insight sign languages have to offer to our derivational models and ideas of how utterances are put together and processed. This started when my family recently discovered a long-lost Slovakian cousin who is deaf, and my conversations with her (ie, taking turns scribbling on a notepad) made me interested in sign languages. (So, if you know of any good opportunities for studying ASL in Ann Arbor or in Kansas, let me know!)
In my spare time I enjoy running and reading childish webcomics such as xkcd and dinosaur comics (the authors of which are role models for linguists and programmers everywhere).