Although his ancestor was brought to lead a Jewish community in Texas, Geller is bucking the clerical trend in his family and helping to lead humanity into the next computer age.

"I was always interested in computers, since 6th grade or before," he says. "I had a computer I bought with money from my newspaper route. Well, I claim to have bought it, but my grandparents pitched in a little."

In high school, Geller ran a graphics program he had written on a Cray computer, the most powerful computer around.

"I called them one day and said, 'I was wondering if I could use your Cray computer," and they laughed at me," he says "Then they called me back and said, 'Hey, wait a minute."'

Nevertheless, Geller claims he didn't know much about computers before coming to Harvard and says he wanted to major in math.

"I took CS 50 and I liked the problem solving," he says. "It's nice to finish a problem set and have it do something, as opposed to just having numbers on a piece of paper."

He became the head teaching fellow for Computer Science 50, and last summer was offered a job at Microsoft, programming a version of Word. But this year he turned down a job offer from Microsoft to work at a small company in Israel instead.

Geller says he liked the idea of working at a small, non-bureaucratic firm, but also concedes that part of the reason for his decision was the lack of a strong Jewish community in Seattle.

Other People's Garbage

Mike, who at this point in the interview is getting somewhat bored with talking about computers, can't sit still, playing with his mad scientist eye glasses, stretching a hexagonal slinky, blowing into rubber tubing.

He starts to pack his room, and suddenly announces, "You want to see what I really have that's weird?" Out of a box, Geller pulls confetti, red cellophane circles and rubber stencils.

It's hard to imagine a human being who holds on to more odd items than Geller. Above his fireplace he has beanie caps with propellers on the top (required dress code for CS 50 teaching fellows, thanks to Geller); on his trunk lies an 8-inch plastic green locust and a roll of electric cable warning tape in Hebrew, English and Arabic. And we haven't even opened his drawers yet.

Geller is known among his friends for converting other people's trash into valued possessions. "People throw out a lot of stuff that's useful," he says. "There's a lot of good stuff that's just wasted. I just happen to notice it. I don't rummage, I just find it."

Geller shows off his printer stand, his bathroom trash can and his coffee table, all rescued from the garbage.

"Look at this lamp," he says, pointing to a while stand lamp, "it took me five minutes to fix it. I have a beautiful light here. It's just a matter of being resourceful. I needed a lamp, I found a lamp!"