In doing a little surfing around people's personal web pages (mostly during the night shift while running experiments) I found that what I was most interested in (after I looked at the pictures!) was info on who the person was. I was always surprised to find that this was missing on so many pages, until it occurred to me that I didn't have that info on my page either. So here it is:
My name is Joshua Holden. I was born March 17, 1973, just after lunch, which my mother is still upset about since they fed her corned beef and cabbage (which she hates) in the hospital in honor of St. Patrick's Day. I grew up in Ridgewood, NJ, then went to college at UC Berkeley. I have now returned to NJ where I am working on a Ph.D. in experimental nuclear physics at Rutgers University.
Most of my free time ("What free time?!" my advisor would say) is spent underground, crawling through caves. I drive to West Virginia several times a year, since there's not much caving to be had in NJ, and fly to Tennessee/Alabama/Georgia as often as time and money allow, which seems like once a year. When I am not caving, I am generally cleaning my cave gear.
I would like to build a house, but that takes a lot of time and money, neither of which I have. So I settle for wandering around Home Depot looking at possibilities. I do try to find projects wherever I can. One of these was to put a pond in my parents' backyard.
I have many places I would like to travel to, but again lack time and money. I managed to get a free flight to Turkey last September, and found cheap tickets to Spain and St. Martin in the last year. Most recent was a 2 week trip to Thailand in November. One of these days I'll make it to Paris, and I've just earned enough frequent flyer miles to go to South America for "free." Pretty much everywhere else is somewhere on my list of future destinations.
Lets see, what else... I cook, I have a family (two younger sisters, 2 parents), and I have a small Mazda truck, where I have spent a cumulative total of 3 months in the drivers seat since Jan '95. I guess thats about it.