It’s pretty fair to say I’ve grown up my whole life around computers. Some of my earliest memories include playing with boxes of punch cards that my Dad brought home from work (he was and is a programmer as well). I wrote my first program for money when I was in seventh grade, taught computers to adults during the summer of my sophomore year in high school and started working for my first startup company two year before graduating from high school. Depending on which of these jobs you count, that means I’ve been programming professionally for between 19 and 24 years (I was born March 28, 1969). That’s more than half my life!

Over the years I’ve managed to work either a) for startup companies or b) for the companies that later acquired those startups. Of the five startups I’ve worked for, four were ultimately bought out by larger companies (HP, Global Crossing, Juniper Networks, and Red Prairie respectively). The other one was and is a privately held entity. None of them have yet been home runs, but none have been Pets.com either. The largest was OneSecure, a managed security services startup that raised nearly $100M in VC funding and where I held the titles of VP of Application Architecture and Senior VP of IT. This was also the only one that I view as a personal failure. I suppose bios shouldn’t list your failures, but frankly I learned more from that failure than I did from many of the successes.

Aside from my work as an engineer, architect, coach, leader, and code monkey, I’ve also found time to get married and raise a family. My wife Brillana and I have been married for twelve years and have two beautiful children. Util recently we lived in Bangalore, India where I served as Director of Engineering for StorePerform Technologies. We were there for over three years and the experience has been wonderful. We left behind many friends and it was difficult to return. We have nothing but good things to say about India and the people who have become our friends here. In the past we have lived in Peru for a year and a half, and I lived in Gambia (West Africa) for a year as well. All of this international living helped make adjusting to India a relatively painless experience, it’s not something I recommend to everyone. We have now moved to San Diego where I helped found a startup company named Photometria.

I love games (almost too much). I’ve even been forced to stop playing chess altogether as it is WAY to addicting. I also enjoy writing which is probably why Code Craft and its sister site Soul Craft exist.

In 2006, Time Magazine named me as their “Person of the Year.” I must admit, it was quite an honor, but I can’t take all the credit myself. Too many other people played a part for me to mention them all here.