In the event that someone who doesn’t know me ever runs across this page, I offer up the following quick biography.

You can find my (now somewhat out of date) resume here.

I was born in January of 1972, which makes 33 as I write this. I currently live in Orlando, Fl. I’ve been here since March of 2002. I grew up in both northern Indiana and northern Florida. I consider Tallahassee to be my hometown. I’m a 1990 graduate of Amos P. Godby H.S., a 1997 graduate of Florida state with a B.A. in International Affairs and a 2003* graduate of Florida State with a master’s in Latin American History. Dad’s a unionized factory worker and former professional AFL-CIO activist. Mom’s a nurse. I’m somewhere on the left end of the political spectrum. By temperament, I’m defiant of authority, but otherwise prone to moderation, compromise, etc. By intellectual inclination, I’m radical and uncompromising. I struggle with those two forces in myself. I occasionally joke that I’m a moderate far leftist.

My academic research was focused on popular movements in the modern caribbean and their interplay with various economic development strategies. The late Jamaican PM Michael Manley is one of my heroes. My academic career had a fabulous crash and burn aspect to it during the 1999-2000 school year. I had a falling out with my major prof who rather suddenly retired–leaving all of his students stuck in the lurch. At the same time, I chose not to shun a friend who was utterly screwed over by our department after having been used sexually by a prof. Between those two incidents, I had no future where I was and no good way to continue with my studies somewhere else.

That all took place near the end of the dotcom era. I had some computer skills and kind of fell into doing IT work during a heated job market. I’ve been lucky enough to stay in the sector rather than spending a year or two out of work after the bust like many folks I’ve known. I’ve spent the last four and a half years at Business Objects. I’ve recently moved from doing enterprise technical support into a role as a technical instructor with our global services group. This job will require a relocation to San Jose sometime later this year. I love the work in spite of a fairly heavy business travel schedule that goes with it. I married the former Lysella Shaw on May 13th, 2006 and don’t like being away from her for a week at a time.
*Although I quit being a student and filed my graduation papers in 2000, the university claimed not to have received them. They were sent through interoffice mail. When I found this out, nearly three years later, I had to apply for graduation and all of that all over again. The date on my degree is August 2003. I was actually two semesters beyond having completed the requirements for a master’s degree when I left. I was in the early stages of Ph.D research.