About

I was born in 1968 in Wichita, Kansas, but moved to Sacramento, CA when I was 2. So my whole experience is pretty much from growing up in California. We lived in Fair Oaks, where we had a few acres with horses, chickens, goats, sheep, and even a little orchard.

Despite the nature, I was always fascinated by technology. My first computer was a Bell Labs CARDIAC. I still have it! I made a program that could play Tic Tac Toe. I am pretty sure this is the most sophisticated program ever made for this device.

Later I built a Heathkit trainer as part of a 4H project. I spent hours learning how to program it so that you can input two numbers from the keyboard and it would add them together! I tried to demonstrate this to people, but it wasn't impressive to them. First, they would try to add 9 + 8, and they would get the answer 11. And then I would have to explain hexadecimal. Pretty sure they thought I was making it up. Then they would try 200 + 100, and they would get the answer 44. And then I would have to explain 8 bit overflow. Also – not very impressed.

When I was in 6th grade I became very interested in movies. I got a Super 8 camera and started making films. This hobby took me through high school, where I started doing computer programming and teaching to fund my film habit. Tom Savini was my hero, and I focused on making incredibly over-the-top gory horror movies.

I went to school at University of Southern California in Los Angeles. I studied Philosophy and Cinema Production. I loved it! I was in an undergrad honors program called "Thematic Option". We had small classes with top professors, and basically a ton of attention and support. It was very tough but really rewarding.

My sophomore year, I saw a locked room at the library that was full of brand new, still-in-box color Macintosh computers. These were impossible to find at the time. I tracked them down and found that they were a grant from Apple for the Anthropology department. I found out they were looking for a Mac programmer, and I signed up. This turned out to be a project to support water management in Bali for the indigenous water priests. The work was a big success and eventually became a special on the BBC.

Thanks to that press, during the summer I got an internship at Apple in their Advanced Technology Group.