Everything you ever wanted to know about me 2011
I’m 21 (b. Jan 10, 1990) and was born in Mountain View, CA. I grew up in the SF Bay Area (San Jose, in fact) my whole life, save for the years 1995 to 2000 when I lived in Lowry Bay, New Zealand. In September 2008 I left for Boston, MA, where I now attend Northeastern University and am working towards a dual degree in Computer Science and Music Technology. I also lived in New York City for eight months this year while working on music-related iPad apps at Steinway Musical Instruments.
I’ve been into tinkering with computers since I was six years old and my mother brought home a Power Macintosh 7100/66 from the offices of what was then Tandem Computers - they had been swallowed up by Compaq, so the office was going over to Windows and letting employees keep their old Mac workstations.
I’ve also been into music production and performance since around that time. Two friends from my school in New Zealand and I recorded a demo tape as “Speedzone”.
Fast forward to my high school years after returning to San Jose in 2000. My parents divorced around this time and my brother and I headed back there with our mom, while our dad headed off to Honolulu to run the University of Hawai’i Manoa Campus. I attended Harker, a smallish private school. I am tremendously appreciative of the opportunities I was offered and all the resources I had access to as a result of being there. It is in no small part the reason I get to be who I am today.
During high school, both at Harker and outside it, my interests became skill sets and I had a blast collaborating with those around me to do all sorts of cool stuff. Besides hacking around on my own (modding Xboxes, rewiring my car, and the like) I’ve been actively involved in the local tech industry since 2005. I started out when I was 13 as the only IT person for a print shop, but quickly transitioned to software development. Started out (as we all must) doing internal web applications for the likes of Pfizer (I didn’t write their mass mailer program, though, I swear) but graduated to working on embedded software which now lives in a wide variety of D-Link products at Ubicom.
During my first two years of college I worked (mostly remotely) for Kalexo on Mac and iPhone software as well as server guts. They had a beautiful office that remains one of my favorite planewatching spots. I also spent a summer working within biking distance of my childhood home at SandForce, mostly doing the plumbing/hacking to enable affordable PCI SSDs. Riveting, I know.
In high school I also ended up being very involved in all sorts of audio production. This let to my owning (and adoring) lots of shiny toys. I pursued this professionally by doing occasional gigs with a variety of local production companies. In my senior year I sound-designed the school play and stage managed the musical. Along with a lifelong addiction to ClearCom headsets, this also earned me my school’s Technical Theater Certificate.
In college I’ve engaged with the Boston arts community, sound designing plays and composing music for dance performances. And, true to form, I’ve continued to curate a delightful collection of shiny toys.
So, blogosphere, please come along for the ride! I never have any idea what’s going to happen next, although I have noticed this pattern where it’s both totally not what I planned or thought I wanted, but also unpredictably fabulous. I’m extremely fortunate to have retained the interest of the same girl mentioned in the previous version of this post. She also happens to be a far more consistent and interesting blogger than me so you should click on through.
Some more links that I hope you’ll find fascinating:
