This is a work in progress. I'll probably make updates every now and then with new information (both current and to the past) or to revise things. It's a bit long, but whatever. I'm not going to be too brief in describing my life. Maybe one day I will add some pictures.
I've sectioned it off by where I lived at the time. That seems to be the most logical organization since moves are often big times of change. You can zoom ahead to a later section with the list below:
Let's start at the beginning. I was born in Neederland, Texas on December 20, 1979. I lived in that area for the next four years or so. Yes, I have a birthday situated right around Christmas. Anyways, let's skip ahead to things I can actually remember. I don't remember too much about living in Texas, being rather young and all.
When I was four or so, we moved to Montgomery, Alabama. People will tell you that town sucks. But I enjoyed it. It was nicer than what I can remember of Texas, and I met a lot of cool people there. I went to Saint James School all the way up through seventh grade.
This is where I also got into a lot of stuff. I became very involved with band and learned to play the flute. For a while, I was getting pretty good too. I got into marching band, which was just about as much fun as it gets. We went to Disney World in Florida and played in Tomorrowland, underneath the people mover thing. It was lots of fun and providedme with opportunities to do things and meet people.
So most of my friends were in band with me. That's just how it seems to work out, I guess. One of my best friends there was Josh Lynch. We hung out a whole lot, which was cool. After getting out of St. James, he went to Samford in Birmingham, where he majors in music but has probably long since graduated. We got together a couple times after I moved to Charlotte, but I have not traded any email with him in several years. The only other person I've talked to from Montgomery since moving is my next-door neighbor Landon Wilson, who I spent lots of time with making up games outside.
The summer after that, I got ahead in math. I participated in a three week long program up at Davidson College (just north of Charlotte) called TIP. It was really cool... I lived in a dorm and got to see a bunch of people from Montgomery. The people that I hung out with were really cool. And I got to do algebra all day. It was choice. So that's how I ended up always being a class ahead of everyone in math.
Yes, at one point I actually did like math because I was good at it. I was on the math team at Saint James and we were pretty good. I only won one individual award in two years of trying, but I came close a bunch. I stopped liking math after it stopped making sense (like higher calculus). Not only do we no longer use numbers, we don't even use letters that I am familiar with.
Anyways, after seventh grade, we moved to Charlotte, NC. This was probably the worst time of my life. I had to leave behind everything that I knew and all my friends and hejaz. It was really depressing. Add to that the fact that Charlotte is a maze of identical suburbs and pretension, constantly trying to be like Atlanta.
I went to South Charlotte Middle School (an experimental school, which means the teachers and administrators were constantly making up new rules to see what would work and what didn't). I got the distinct impression that several people there really hated me, and I returned the feeling. However, I did make a couple good friends in Scott Stallings, Pete Trinkle, and Patrick Fox. Each one got me interested in things that would become very important to me later on - Scott gave me a lot of new music tastes, Pete got me interested in biking, and Patrick got me interested in programming. I have since lost touch with all of these guys, too.
Well, I was rather disappointed in the band at South Charlotte. The one at St. James was really choice and we played difficult music. South Charlotte's band was just another middle school band. But they did have the after school band one year, which I consider to be the best I have ever played. Too bad that my creative peak was reached when I was in 8th grade. It's been downhill ever since.
Getting back to the main thread, Patrick really got me interested in the whole computer thing. He first introduced me to Linux and got me interested in programming. So, I guess I should thank him since he pretty much got me to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. It's odd to think about where I am now and how it all got started.
Now we'll fast forward a bit to me being at Providence High School. I was finally able to get back into marching band, which was a good thing. I met yet more cool people in that. One of those was Rebecca Fields whole played flute with me and helped me out a lot that first year. Unfortunately, she disappeared after going off to Virginia Tech as well. But being back in marching band was a really good thing for me. I probably would have gone crazy were it not for band.
Another really important event happened that first year of high school - I got into the whole BBS scene. There is not too much of a BBS scene in Charlotte, but I was all over what little there was. My main hangout was Baseline BBS, which was run buy Whitten Tadlock (unfortunately, he was killed in a car accident a few years ago). The big event to come out of being on this board was meeting Jessica Pritchard. She has since become a really good friend of mine, which is nice. Somehow, she even ended up at the same college of me. I've even kept up with talking to her after graduation, despite my trend.
Besides that, tenth grade was just a progression of identical days. Each one was boring, just like the last. All I had to break up the monotony was band and the email check after getting home (hey, I haven't changed that much after all!)
Eleventh grade was a different story altogether. Right from the beginning, interesting things were happening. Band camp started the year and this is where I met Allison Sandhaus. She would end up being my first real girlfriend. Yes, it is rather sad that it took me until I was halfway through high school to find a girlfriend, but that's just how it all worked out. Anyways, we got along rather well I thought. It was a big learning experience for both of us.
I got to go to Disney World with a different band that year, too. It was a lot of fun because I got to do stuff with my various new friends. And, we did different stuff from back in the day. So I really enjoyed it. Too bad experiences like that get left behind when high school is over.
So on to twelfth grade. I was very happy when my senior year finally showed up because I was really getting sick of being in school. I hadn't really put a lot of thought into where I wanted to go to college, but I was sure that I wanted to do computer science. So I applied to various places and when the results came back, I decided to go to Georgia Tech.
In Charlotte, every senior is required to do a massive project before they are allowed to graduate. This project has several parts: a written paper, a product, and an oral presentation. Well, I chose the topic of computer languages so that I could write one for my product. I was most disappointed when I got a 2 out of 4 on my product grade. I believe that the reason for such a low grade was that my product wasn't all shiny with lots of pictures and stuff. Instead, it was some thick source code binders and a disk. But it was quite an impressive project. So I caused a big stink about it and became sort of a celebrity in my high school. That's why I brought it up. Also, I vowed that I would make those graders pay.
Graduation day was one of the happiest days of my life. it marked a real change for me, and I was ready for it. Still, it's a bit of a sad occasion because you know you'll never see some of those people again (or even talk to many of them). And I also knew that I would be leaving behing Allison and that long-distance relationships usually just don't work out.
So I went off to college and ended up living in the Fortress of Chocolatude. There's enough information out there about the Fort, including the web site. So I am not really going to talk about it here. Suffice it to say that it was one of the best experiences I have ever had, and I am glad to have met those people.
My peer leader (the guy who lives on the floor and makes sure everyone is okay) was Mark Honneycutt. Well, through him I met two of his friends: David Cantrell and Logan Johnson. So at this point they were just getting started working on Slackware Linux, which is the distribution I had been using since way up the page. Anyways, at one point in the year I got pulled into it with the rest of them. That will become important in a few minutes.
The first year was drawing to a close when I heard some very bad news. Allison would be moving back to Missouri, where a lot of her relatives live. I was really upset by this, because it would mean we would very rarely see each other again. This also foreshadowed some bad times ahead. So it was a very sad occasion and then I had to go back to school. That summer, I did some traveling. I went out to Missouri to see Allison, which made me really happy. And I went out to San Jose, to work the Slackware booth at a trade show. That was nice too, because it was all paid for and everything. Besides that, all I did was write Perl.
I had to live by myself the next year. There was no more on-campus housing, so I moved off campus. Not only was it expensive but it was the first time I'd really lived by myself and I did not do a good job of making sure circumstances didn't get me down. A month into my second year in school, Allison and I broke up. This wasn't exactly my finest hour and I spent much of the next couple months feeling very down and not caring at all about school or life. In the years that would follow, I would see her a couple more times and talk to her on occassion, so we are still friends and there's no bad feelings.
This section is under construction. I hate writing about the immediate past. It's hard. Brief summary: quit school, moved to CA with David and Logan to work on Slackware, lots of fun, lots of travelling, did Slackware Alpha port, got interested in e2, company went out of business, decided to move back to Georgia and pick up where I left off.
This section is under construction as well. Brief summary: lived at David's parents' house for a little while, moved to Home Park with some friends, lots of school, biking, met a bunch of good people through e2, moved to another place in Home Park, lots more school, met Sarah, graduated, slept on Logan's couch for a couple months, got a job at Emperor Linux, year of much travelling.
More under construction. Brief summary: quit Emperor, got job at Red Hat, moved to Nashua.