![[ 2003 ]](me2003.jpg)
My full name is Ryan Masaru Kawailani Ozawa, although for most of my adult life I've dropped the Masaru and stubbornly clung to the Kawailani in a perhaps misguided effort to reclaim my Native Hawaiian heritage. (My maternal grandmother is half Hawaiian.) Of course, I look Japanese, which accounts for 75 percent of my chemistry, the remainder a mish-mash of Chinese, Filipino, even Italian and Norwegian, among half a dozen other labels.
I was born November 6, 1974 in Honolulu, Hawai`i, and have lived in the islands my whole life. Today (which is to say, whenever I last had a chance to update this page), I am 30 years old, married to Jen (since November 1997), and father to Katie, Zac, and Alex.
I have a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Hawai`i, a degree that took me nine and a half years to earn. For the past year, I've been working full-time as a technology manager for a small, local financial institution, and keeping myself sane by continuing to putter around on the Internet — something I've done since 1994. I do very bad web design for very good prices (often free) under the banner of Leahi.Net.
My obsession with online journals began in 1996, when I started a pseudonymous site that got me into all manner of trouble. This site, put online in 1997, is less interesting but more real, and for better or worse, looks about the same now as it did then, despite a few under-the-hood overhauls. When this obsession was at its peak, I ran Diarist.Net (now more a museum piece than the community hub it once was) and started JournalCon (fortunately now more fun that ever).
Besides the obvious — you know, family stuff — my other interests include media studies (basically whining about how there's no good journalism anymore), new media (basically fantasizing about how technology will change everything), geocaching (basically hiking for geeks), and napping. I'll do anything for a nap.