Growing up in the Silicon Valley, as the Silicon Valley was growing up, taught me much! I took my first data entry class at 14 in a summer program (yes, I was geeky enough to take summer school because it was fun), and I was hooked. I had a gift, I suppose, because soon I was setting up electronics equipment, running the IBM keycard machine, and programming ASCII graphics calendars. Shortly thereafter I was in my first programming class (yes on an Apple II), and I ate it up like candy. Eschewing the traditional route, I enrolled in college part time, and started working full time, temp work mostly, at places like DEC, NEC, and the Wollongong group – early groundbreakers in networks, communications, and all things digital, including the World Wide Web. I programmed my first website in HTML, by hand – no WYSIWYG here, and designed the graphics using paint – one pixel at a time. Things have changed since then, I’ve had two kids, been married twice, moved from the west coast to the east coast and then to DC, Florida, North and back south again. I’ve worked in the private sector, the public sector and now run my own business. The kids are grown, my passions are established – business, writing, design, gaming and helping others.