Chief Engineer Michael Burnstein
Name Michael E. Burnstein
Position Chief Engineer
Second Position 2nd Officer
Rank Chief Engineer
Character Information
| Gender | Male | |
| Species | Human | |
| Age | 36 | |
| Date of Birth | April 1, 2362 | |
| Place of Birth | New York City, Earth | |
| NPC Author | Cam |
Physical Appearance
| Height | 1.83m (6 ft) | |
| Weight | 77kg (170 lbs) | |
| Hair Color | Dark brown | |
| Eye Color | Hazel | |
| Physical Description | Tall, slim and a little gangly. His hair often seems to have a mind of its own, adopting a spiky 'mad scientist' look unless he keeps it really short, which he usually doesn't (getting hair cuts is a pain and he sort of likes the mad scientist look). On duty he usually looks a little rumpled because crawling through Jeffries tubes and playing with things that go 'boom' tends to have that effect. He usually wears a band with mini-PADD on his wrist to hide some embarrassing burn scars. |
Ship Identification
| Duty Shift | Alpha |
Family
| Father | Milo Burnstein | |
| Mother | Angela Engel | |
| Sister(s) | Ellie | |
| Other Family | niece: Sophie |
Personality & Traits
| General Overview | Burnie is a little eccentric (okay, weird). For instance, he loves old-school video games (the kind with the really cheesy pixellated explosions) and plays them on his PADD to relax. He's bright but often a bit hyper and given to off-beat and sarcastic humor. He enjoys parodies and loves the sort of music with funny and/or strange lyrics. It is not unusual to see his head bobbing side to side as he works because he's blasting music on the earbuds covered by his hearing protection gear. He's also a bit of a pyro. Fire, explosions, and high energy in all forms fascinate him. Despite his love of pyrotechnics, he is pretty fond of life and limb and treats the tools of his trade with more care and caution than is necessarily apparent to the casual observer. He may mouth off and make wisecracks, but he's good in a situation since he can generally improvise something usefully destructive from whatever raw materials are available. Obviously, he's never heard of the 20th century show McGyver, he would probably have loved it (even if he laughed at how contrived some of the scenarios were). |
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| Strengths & Weaknesses | + Intelligent, inventive and resourceful; can generally improvise something usefully destructive from whatever raw materials are available + Experienced in a wide range of engineering applications, but loves warp engines and weaponry most (i.e, application of explosions) + Good marksmanship + Fairly out-going and makes friends easily within the context of groups of people who share his interests - Eccentric (okay borderline crazy) with pyro tendencies - Tends to be easily distracted distracted by an interesting bit of tech - Aversion to actually hitting anyone (if judo wasn't an option, he probably would never have passed the hand-to-hand requirements for Starfleet) -Like many people from NYC he can sometimes come across to people from more rural areas (i.e., almost everywhere else) as being a little pushy or abrupt. Although he's not shy about verbal confrontation, he's not combative. - Occasionally struggles with aphasia due to an encounter with a intense temporal distortion |
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| Ambitions | Finding a new path in life, and maybe someone to spend that life with | |
| Hobbies & Interests | pyrotechnics, fire arms, old-style video games, off-beat music (plays keyboard), history |
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| Sexual Orientation | Heterosexual |
History
| Personal History | Burnie (Mike to his family and oldest friends) was born in the historic Brooklyn section of New York City. He's the second child of a history professor and an art historian. His sister Ellie is six years older and has always been the reliable, level-headed one. She's currently married, has a young daughter (Sophie) and works for the city as an architect. In addition there's a small army of extended family who were always available to take Ellie and Mike whenever their parents had to travel for work. Burnie had a fairly normal middle-class up-bringing. What wasn't quite normal was his tendency to destroy things. Like a lot of engineers he began pulling things apart at an early age, curious to see what made them tick. Unlike most engineers, he rarely put them back together. Instead he tested the limits of the components in every manner he could manage until there was no hope of reassembly. Still, in an attempt to encourage his interest in science one of his relatives bought him a chemistry kit for his 8th birthday. A number of messy incidents later, his mother made the chemistry kit disappear. This did not deter Burnie from further experimentation. One particularly memorable incident involved testing to see why his mother's nail polish said 'keep away from open flame'. After placing a small(ish) quantity in a glass container, he dropped a lit match into it. Unfortunately the reaction caused the glass to break spending burning polish across the coffee table and splattering his wrist. Quick thinking and automated sprinklers prevented the fire from spreading, but Burnie still has a discolored scar on the side of his wrist. After that, his father wisely decided to get him into model rocketry where older and wiser pyros could guide him. Burnie was hooked and stuck with the hobby, eventually branching into micro smart missiles and UAVs. An internship at a Starfleet contractor that built fighters lead to applying to the Academy. Burnie loved the Academy. So much to do, so much to learn (so many labs to blow up). It was there that he got his nickname - not because of his last name as many people assume, but because of an unfortunate incident with an infrared toaster and some parts that wouldn't quite fit in the sophomore level processing lab's autoclave. Despite (or maybe because of) that bit of innovation, a prominent engineering professor agreed to mentor him and Burnie learned to shine (rather than burn) in that area. He also, much to his parents' chagrin, really took to fire arms and earned a badge for markmanship. His first assignment was to Station 83 where he served with a research team studying advanced warp technology and high energy reactions - exactly the sort of thing he loved. He even got to contribute to a project on containing one of the most explosive compounds ever developed: red matter. The research was interrupted (okay, sharply curtailed) after the fall out from the Hobus supernova, and with the need to counter subsequent aggression from the Klingons and other factions, he was reassigned to shipboard duty on the USS James Lawrence. His tendency to improvise, which had annoyed many superiors at the research post, earned praise in action. That brought him to the attention of intel. He was judged 'too erratic' to recruit, but he began graduate work assigned to one of the researcher engineers in the division. That research and his prior experience made him a candidate to flesh out the engineering team on SB Aeon, a station guarding a temporal anomaly. ::CLASSIFIED:: Medically discharged from Starfleet, Burnie worked for a time at a shipyard, but the work wasn't enough. Still decompressing from his last mission on Aeon, he decided to just take off and seek new challenges, unencumbered by the strictures of Starfleet. Along the way he has fallen in with Liha, a Romulan exile, who decided to be his 'apprentice' or 'keeper' (depending on which of them you talk to). |
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| Service Record | Engineering Cadet | Starfleet Academy 2379 - 2383 Ensign| Starbase 83 | 2383 - 2387 LT JG| USS James Lawrence | 2387 - 2390 Lieutenant | Starfleet Academy Research | 2390-2391 LT Commander| Starbase Aeon | 2391 - 2394 |