| Name | Daniel Taner Halıcıoğlu |
| Born | Stanford, CA on May 15, 1974 |
| Hair | Brown (tends to get lighter in the summer) |
| Eyes | Green |
| Height | 6'4"+ (193+cm) |
| Weight | ~225lbs (~102kg) |
Although my first name is "Daniel", I have always been called by my middle name, "Taner". Taner is pronounced (well, the americanized pronounciation :-) with the "a" sounding like the a in father, and the "er" sounding like "air". Kind of like the 'Conair' brand of hair dryers ;-)
The reason for using my middle name is because I am Turkish (well, half Turkish) and it is traditional to use a person's middle name. This stems from an older tradition where a child was named by a nurse immediately when it is born with a common name (such as Ahmet, Mehmet or Ali). This was to prevent an unnamed child (in case the parents somehow died before naming the child). The name the parents give the child then becomes the middle name, and thus the child's "real" name.
Another interesting fact about me is that (from my Mother's side) I am directly related to Daniel Boone, a famous American Pioneer. He is my great-great-great-great-great-great-uncle. :-) (that should be 6 great's) My Mother is from Kentucky, and I enjoy going there during the summer and visiting all my relatives.
Anyway, as it says above, I was born on May 15, 1974 at Stanford Hospital in Stanford, California. When I was about 6 months old, my family moved out to Ankara, Turkey, where we lived for about 3 years (my parents had been living in Turkey before my birth). I basically learned English and Turkish at the same time, and I can speak Turkish reasonably well. While in Turkey, my father taught at the Middle East Technical University (METU), and my mother taught at Hacettepe University.
In 1977, we came back to California, supposedly for a 1 year hiatus, but ended up staying... oh... a lot longer than that :-) From '77 to '79 my mother worked in the Biology department of Stanford Hospital, and my father worked in the Material Science department of Stanford, as well as at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffet Field in Mountain View, CA. We finally settled in Palo Alto, CA - which is a city of about 70,000 and is located right next to the Stanford Campus.
I attended Hoover Elementary School starting in 1979 and graduated in 1986. I then attended Jane Lathrop Stanford (a.k.a. "JLS") Middle school, which used to be called "Wilbur Middle School" until about 2 years before my attendance. In 1988 I started 9th grade at Palo Alto Senior High School (a.k.a Paly) and graduated in 1992. I then attended The University of California at San Diego's Revelle college, majoring in Computer Science, graduating in December of 1996.
I have a younger brother, Noah Nedim, who (of course) goes by his middle name as well :-) Most people end up calling him "Ned" for short - which he doesn't seem to mind. He was born in 1979, and also attended both Hoover and Paly, and graduated from UCSD (Revelle, as well) in July 2001...
Click here for more info on my family.