Born in Houston, TX, in the same year that ethernet was invented at Xerox PARC, I became accustomed to winters that some would call summers. I lived there through nearly ten years of wanton excitement, two hurricanes, one snowfall, and a good many Christmasses spent canoeing through Big Bend. -][- Moved to Lubbock, TX in pursuit of career-enhancing opportunities to be found in the 5th and 6th grade classrooms. I lived there, playing in the orchestra, surrounded by cotton fields, until I learned to drive. Vacations were spent skiing and camping in the mountains of New Mexico. -][- In the same year the Morris Internet Worm ate up all the Sun and DEC hosts on the planet, I moved to Idaho. I discovered powder snow, the Grand Tetons, and Yellowstone. I spent three years there learning Pascal and perfecting my desire to encounter the mythological Unix. -][- Left for college while Solaris 2 and Linux were hitting the news stands, and met a NeXT and a VAX for the first time. I spent four years taking care of the silicon buggers while going on geology field trips around the upper midwest. -][- Gradiated from a small midwestern liberal arts college with a BA in geology the same year that Java was released and, sadly, not recaptured and Randal Schwartz was convicted. I attempted to learn C++ while trying to find a job in the greater Madison, WI area. Eventually I arrived at a three week stint making bagel sandwiches for Brueggers and decided that, for the most part, Perl was good enough for me. -][- In the warm summer of 1997, I married Jenizie, and domestic life continued much as it had before. Our home network included around 4 computers, a modem, and our cat. Vacations continued to take place in New Mexico and Colorado. -][- Received an MS in Water Resources Management from the local brewpub university and promptly ordered one of the first copies of Solaris 7 that Sun made freely available (however, I failed to actually use it). I had worked part time writing GPS code and building firewalls, and continued as a packet jockey full time for two more years at that place. -][- After the world failed to implode, but just prior to RSADSI releasing the RSA public key cryptography algorithm into the public domain, Jenizie and I moved to Richmond, IN. I worked part time making systems run right for a consulting team in town. -][- Immediately preceding my third LISA conference, I accepted a job as the lead systems administrator at another small midwestern liberal arts college. Life continued much as it had, but with a cable modem, 802.11b, and another cat. Places like California, Colorado, and New Mexico provided evidence that the midwest was flat. -][- The day after the LISA '06 program committee meeting, I accepted a job as the lead SA at a small midwestern liberal fine arts college and traded tornados for earthquakes. -][- Shortly after the MESSENGER mission made its flyby of Mercury, we welcomed Laurel into the world and I took a few weeks away from pounding on servers. -][- Around the same time as the most massive star ever found was discovered (R136a1), I traded academia for the dot com and joined the Big Purple, increasing the number of servers I managed by a couple orders of magnitude. Despite the minor setback of a car accident and injury, life progressed quite well.