The story so far

(In the last few weeks, I’ve happily become reacquainted, via Facebook, with a number of old buddies from college and elsewhere. Since the first question is usually, “What have you been up to?”, I’ve decided to answer it here to avoid having to do it more than once.)

I graduated from Baylor University in December, 1983. The problem is, I wasn’t informed of this until February, 1984. In the Fall semester, I had filed the necessary paperwork to graduate; however, I had been informed that, because I had started life as a music major, my music courses would not transfer, and thus I needed 12 hours of electives to complete my degree.

In the Spring, I filed the papers again, and the administration found that they had made a mistake: instead of disallowing all music courses, they should have only disallowed the applied music courses (lessons, for example). I actually had nearly 40 hours of electives credited.

When I received the call from the Dean of the college of Arts Sciences informing me of this, I was rather dumbfounded. He quickly made the offer to permit me to enter graduate school a few weeks’ late. I did so, but determined after a few semesters that I really did not want a Master’s in English, so I moved to Austin to go to work for a friend’s startup computer company.

I worked there until 1987, when the company, through a variety of misfortunes, ceased operations, and I quickly found a job at the Texas Education Agency. I had a semi-private office with two other people, one of whom was a really cute girl. She and I flirted by tossing notes over our cubicle walls, and then we started dating; secretly, of course, since it’s never a good idea to date your co-workers.

Of course, on one of our first dates we encountered our boss; she evidently approved, because she said, “This will be our little secret.” When Anita and I announced our engagement in March that year, there was quite a bit of surprise in the office, but everyone handled it graciously, and I moved to another department to avoid conflict of interests. Anita and I were married in October, 1988, at St. David’s church in Austin.

In April, 1991, Elam joined our family; his coming into the world was an exciting experience (to say the least). He was six weeks premature because Anita had preeclampsia; she spent the first week of Elam’s life sedated and on a respirator, and Elam spent the first few weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit. I spent the first week riding the elevator between the first floor (cardiac ICU) and seventh floor (neonatal ICU) of Seton Hospital.

At the same time, I was in the midst of changing jobs, and went to work for BMC Software as a Technical Writer. I was only there for about 18 months before I took a job as a software engineer with a tiny startup company, Evolutionary Technologies, Inc. (ETI), in December, 1992.

During our time in Austin, I became involved with the Walk to Emmaus movement; after my pilgrimage, I served as a table leader, musician, music leader, assistant lay director, and ultimately a lay director for a walk in 1995.

In 1996, we moved to England. After Elam’s birth, this was easily the most exciting thing that had happened. I was still working for ETI, helping them get their European operations going. We lived in a little house (7 Broadpool Cottages) on the Windsor Road in Ascot, Berkshire, just outside of London. I was lucky enough to get to travel all over Europe (and occasionally to Africa) as part of my job. In 1999, I changed jobs and became the managing director of a small consulting firm (still based in the UK). Most of 1999 and 2000 was spent working in the UK and Wuppertal, Germany (I commuted every week) on various consulting engagements.

In October, 2000, we left the UK (and my job) and moved to Silicon Valley, taking up residence in Morgan Hill (just south of San Jose). We’ve been here every since. I’ve worked (and not worked) for a variety of small companies, finally coming to rest at Yahoo! in 2004.

And that, my friends, brings us up to date. Stay tuned to see what the future holds!