* Birth

Born in San Diego February 9, 1966.

** Lived in an Apartment in San Diego

Lived in some apartment I don't really remember for a little bit.

** Lived in "New House" in San Diego.

Moved to "New House". That's what I called it. I have memories of it.
Peacocks in the back yard in a cage. There was a playhouse. A swing
set, I think.

There was a swingset in the kid's yard across the street. Remember
swinging on the neato double swing on it, when my parents were
visiting theirs.

Spring water dispenser in the garage (?). It was empty, so I tried to
refill it. Lifted a huge glass bottle, dropped it, and slashed the
shit out of my hand. Blood gore. Went to the hospital, got lots of
stitches. Still visible scar on left hand, complete with needle holes.

** Lived next to a canyon in San Diego.

Remember going and seeing the house being built. It came with some
neato bar stools. Dad had an office. Sliding windows. Weird smell in
the bed room. 

Flew kites way high in the sky in the back yard with huge roll of
waxed string that we bought when I bought my skeleton key at the
hardware store, where I told the guy behind the counter that my dad
let me try his cigar (that he lit in the Volvswagon cigarette
lighter), and he said that was illegal.

My father wouldn't let me in the door once. He said he didn't know who
I was. He may have been wearing a cap with a propeller on it at the
time. 

The kid next door (in the other direction) had a spook house made out
of refrigerator boxes. He was the one who pushed me around in the
stroller. Same one who stopped by with his mother (Aunt Peg) years
later in Carabelle, and went fishing on the teacher's dock with Paul
and I. 

The kid next door, who had a neat red grocery-bill-counter-upper (with
four buttons), teased me about moving to Kentucky Fried
Chicken.

Remeber going to Cincinatti.

Remember going to University of Kentucky campus.

Rember going to Kentucky fair. With Deany Warren (kid with imaginary
friend) and mom.

Remeber camping with them at Mamoth Cave. Went thru cave. Saw no bats.
Bought soveneer (sick) piece of limestone with sparkeled multicolor
paint on it glued to styrofoam.

** Lived in Lexington Kentucky

Lived next door to Morris. I remember him standing there in the
driveway when we were just moving in, after driving astronomical
distances in a Volks Wagon from San Diego. 

People across the back yard fence had a rabbit: "Bugs Bunny." 
Their mom made them eat their barf. 

The Warrens lived next door. They were horrible people. Shot bb's at
our windows, One kid had rotten teeth. I gave him a banana for his
birthday. The mom was a mean lady who was so fat she waddled. I called
her fatso one day and she sprained her finger calling my mom on me on
the phone.

We had a party line. Once somebody called on the phone and asked me if
I wanted a fire engine. I said oh yes, I want a fire engine! They told
me that it would be parked outside my house. It never showed up. The
man down the street was a fire man. I wanted to be one. He talked at
my pre-school. He had a heart attack.

There were other Warrens down the street. The kid at that house had an
imaginary friend, and a huge stuffed bear. I mean HUGE.

I went to the pre-school down the street. I walked there. Mrs. House
was my teacher. I gave her a Greatest Teacher award when I graduated.
They had school on Sunday, where we attended chaple. It was a
religious school. I was bored Sundays. I remember when I choose my
favorite colors. We had a project to do with crayons, and she said we
should use our two favorite colors. I had to make up my mind, so I
choose purple, and, more arbitrarily, red. She could not teach me the
difference between a jacket and a coat. In the storage room full of
games, I read the word "puzzle", and pronounced it as "pyoozle" as a
joke. She was irritated, and corrected me. I realized this, so I kept
pronouncing it "pyoozle."  We made a big list of much more than 100
homonymn on a strip of paper on the wall. She had said that there were
only 100 homonyms, but we topped that. I brough in Moose and Mousse.
My mom helped me with that one. We took pieces of wood and nailed
bottle tops onto them to make gears we could turn. The nails bent the
tops a bit, and some of them were already bent, so they weren't
exectly smooth meshing. My first homework was to go turn on a faucet
and watch how the water runs. They taught us to skip in gym, but I was
trotting.

* Edmunds, Washington (near Seattle)
* Derwood, Maryland (near Rockville)
* Gaithersburg, Maryland
* College Park, Maryland

* Junior High School

In junior high school, I got an Apple II, which caused me to stop
hanging out at Radio Shack all the time. I went from Basic to 6502
assembly to Pascal to Logo to Forth.  When I got a modem, I got an
account on some of MIT's machines over the Arpanet. Learned Emacs,
Lisp, Macsyma, started writing lots of terminal programs, and got hot
and heavy into electronic mail.  During high school, Mark Weiser gave
me an account on Mimsy, the CSD's Vax. I used it to learn about C,
Unix, networking, ZMob, and to supplant my social life. I worked in
the attendance office in high school as a student assistant, hacking
Image/Query on an HP3000. I wrote a small adventure game in Logo that
Terrapin distributes with Commodore-64 Logo. I got a job hacking Forth
for a company called Computer Challenges. I wrote an animation package
and a graphics demo in Cap'n Software's [Crunch] Forth system (under
DOS 3.2), created various utilities in 6502 assembly, and implemented
a Forth-83 system for the Apple based on the old 6502 FIG-Forth (under
DOS 3.3). Computer Challenges tried to screw me over, so I stopped
working for them. On my own, I converted my Forth system to run under
ProDOS, and wrote lots of nice things for it. Worked for Typerite for
Selfware and Software Express Videotex for Karl Ginter.  I graduated
from high school, and started taking classes and the U of Md.,
majoring in Computer Science. At that point, I was hired by the CS
Department, and worked on the systems staff, hacking, doing systems
support, dumping, creating, installing, experimenting, and learning. I
was chosen to be on the team of four to represent UMD at the 1984 ACM
Capitol Regional programming contest, along with Chris Torek, James
O'Toole, and Sergio Antoy. We won first place, and went on to the
International ACM Scholastic Programming Contest in New Orleans, to
take forth place. I won third place in a preliminary programming
contest to choose the team to represent UMD at a contest at Drew
University, where our team of four won third. I was also on the team
of four from UMD that won third at the 1985 ACM Capitol Regional
programming contest.