CoreBB

LoL.... Yes, up stairs. I also sometimes get stuck *under* pool tables

Well, let us see...

I was born in Portland, OR in 1970. I am first generation US from my mother's side (they are French/French Canadian) and 5th Generation on my fathers side - Welsh/Irish immigrants from back in the day. My parents met and married in the Peace Corps in Nigeria (where, incidentally, is where I was conceived.) My parents were the true hippie sorts - we didn't even have a TV until I was 8 and didn't have cable TV until I was 16. I have a sister - Heather - who is 10 years younger than me.

I did the public school education, but tended to have more fun outside of school. I took up Violin in kindergarten, started also on Cello in 4th grade, switched from Violin to Viola in 5th grade, and added piano in the 8th grade. I belonged to a variety of groups (from the Portland Youth Philharmonic to various quartets that we would play at weddings, etc.) In middle school, I would hop a bus downtown to a "Saturday Market" and play viola/cello to make some extra cash.

I started soccer in kindergarten as well, and played all through high school then switched to rugby in college. I am not really athletic, but do enjoy remodeling, etc.

I was always into tinkering, electronics, animation, etc. I have done everything from setting the middle school science lab on fire (that will teach them to give *me* fire and tell me to see how much heat I can conserve) to blowing an entire floors electricity in a capacitor experiment in high school. I did an internship during high school at Will Vinton Studios working on a few small commercials (it is an animation company.) I also made a series of animated claymation movies staring Dirk the Daring when I was .. oh.. nine to eleven years old. Used an old Bell and Howell super-8 camera, a hand editor/splicer and a projector.

Like any kid in that era, Atari ruled initially, replaced soon by Sinclairs, Vic-20s and C-64s.. and then x86 came rolling along. I took a few years of BASIC programming classes in middle school and helped write an award winning game with our teacher and classmates (Dr. Dr.) on some TRS-80 Model IIIs. Took some Pascal, etc moving forward as well. But was mostly just an "end user" for all practical purposes once I got into high-school and until I left college.

I took five years of drafting/architectural drafting in High School (I took classes at the HS while I was in middle school, they were right near each other.) I thought I wanted to be an architect - until I found out how nasty, ugly, competitive that industry is.

I went to Reed College in Portland - starting in their Nuclear Physics program. But.. they used Apples in their nuke lab and they drove me nuts. I also started taking a lot of.. mind altering substances, so I decided I should switch majors - so I went with Mathematics. As it turns out, that is also not good if you are ingesting large quantities of mind altering substances, so I switch my major again - to Philosophy ..

I married my high school sweetheart, which ended in disaster - but did yield two really great kids - Eli (11) and Claire (9). I could go on for hours about them, but will save you the boredom

For work, I have done everything from grocery (clerk, cashier, asst. product manager) to pizza delivery to doing live animal demonstrations at the Oregon Zoo. I worked for 7 years at a coffee roasting company that started opening retail stores, which was interesting. We went from only little retail store to 70-something of them in five states. When I left, I was IT Director (having previously been Master Roaster, Store Manager, and Regional Manager) - it was at this company that I got back into computers...

Post divorce and having left the coffee company, I worked for a while at Sprint (T2/3 dedicated line support ¡V ISDN, T1, etc.) but when they merged with Earthlink, I ran away fast. I then moved to Seattle to work for a software company, and is where I am still today

I have remarried to a *great* woman, recently moved into a great house and am having a blast with the kids. And loving my job as well

All I could think of off the top of my head..

Edit:

Smurf Fact #1:

I was the 3rd Generation to graduate from US Grant High School in Portland, OR.