1990 - 1995 : [The First] College Years

tad apologized tracey in the dorms

1990

shared address with dorm guy

1990

At the end of April of 1990 I turned 17 years old, shortly before I graduated high school.

Actually, technically, I didn't graduate high school because I was deficient in Physical Education credits. Most boys in my school participated in sports, especially Football and Baseball. Not only do I particularly dislike those two sports, but I've always been more interested in indidiual activities than team activities, and I've never been physically competitive. Not only that, but my parents really didn't support us children requiring any costs (such as uniforms and gear) or transportation. I had learned this when Tim, who was a year ahead of me in the same high school, had tried to participate in Football.

I think the school had warned me about my PE deficiency before graduation, so I signed up for golf. I didn't have clubs, but I played with my friend Matt, who had left-handed clubs. There wasn't any instructor; we were supposed to just go out and play. I did that a few times before just giving up.

The school did give me a diploma, but made me promise to take some kind of physical activity course at Santa Rosa Junior College over the summer. I signed up for something that sounded like it had minimal intensity, which turned out to be some kind of stretching program for geriatrics, so I dropped out of that as well. Luckily, the school never followed up, but it probably wouldn't have mattered - I had already been accepted to college and nobody has ever asked to see my high school records.

Around the time that school ended, there was a party on campus for the seniors. I don't remember what I injested, but I remember waking up while driving my truck from Santa Rosa to Cotati with Bry. Even though Metallica was blasting, I had somehow fallen asleep.

My dad let me throw a party at his house. It seems like Judy was not living there yet. I think we had a keg, which was probably safer because the children would sleep there rather than drinking and driving home from random parties.

At one point, the cops came to the house and asked everyone that had a car parked the wrong way on the stree to move their cars. This got a bunch of drunk kids to get in their vehicles and move them. The cops didn't give us any other problems.

I also went on a class trip to Mazatlan in Mexico. We did a lot of drinking there. I was upstairs at one club when a guy came up and started looking for whoever had knocked a bottle down, which had apparently hit him in the head.

Mexico girls, getting sick

I can't find a record of the show, but I'm relatively certain that I went to see Mr. Bungle and Greenday at the Phoenix Theater in Petaluma before I left for college in 1990. My friend Matt at Cardinal Newman had introduced me to Greenday. I saw Mr. Bungle, which was a great act, but I a friend (maybe Jeremy?) and I got kicked out of the show for smoking a joint on the floor before Greenday came on.

I entered an environmental engineering program in Humboldt State University in northern California. I chose this school for a few reasons: it was easy to get into, it was far awy from my parents, and it was in the Emerald Triangle, which is an area known for having very good marijuana. This last part was really true. I had smoked some decent weed in Sonoma County, but the strains that I found in Humboldt were absolutely amazing, some coming up from Mendocino and some coming down from Alaska.

The triangle includes Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity counties in California, of which Humboldt weed was the best. There was weed that tasted like blackberries and weed that tasted like sunshine.

The kid named Mike that had tried to pants me in fifth grade went to Humboldt State with me, as did Toby. Mike lived in a different dorm. I don't know where Toby lived. He had gone to a Jesuit high school. I did my best to avoid both of them, but was polite when I did see them.

At the time, Mike was kindof a ladies man. I don't know if it was that year, but at some point he started dating an older woman. Whenever he came near, my friends and I would start singing the Police's song, "Born in the 50s". My perspective is that guys are generlaly funny, not really trying to be mean.

meeting mike years later - cob construction

By the time I got to college, I had basically stopped drinking alcohol, likely because I really didn't have time while working every day over the preceding summer. I actually found it kind of revolting to watch other teenagers drinking. They were often making asses of themselves at parties and elsewhere.

The first year, I lived in the dormitories, and I didn't need a vehicle. I had a mountain bike, but it broke and I never got it fixed, and then it got stolen and probably thrown off a bridge when the thief realized that fixing the back brakes was probably impossible because the frame had broken.

The biggest parties happened in the four-person units, but a surprising number of things happened in my single. We referred to one such event as the great pistachio war of 1990, which was a night we spent flicking pistachio shells at each other, completely covering the floor. I remember the dorm attendant, who was a black woman a bit older than us, came to my room late in the early morning once and asked us to turn the music down. "I mean, I like The Time and all, but it's 4:00AM!"

I also remember a group discussion where we all voiced our concerns about the U.S. invasion of Iraq, most specifically that we could be drafted, and our plans for such an event. Basically, we were all going to Canada.

I think that due to another high school deficiency, I had to take acting, speech, or something similar in my first year of college. I chose acting because I had been in Christmas paeganets, thought I could get a small role, and assumed that it would require less work outside of classtime. In general, I don't like people looking at me, let alone being the center of attention. That winter, my class performed a play, along with a number of other classes doing various types of performances. The night of the play was when I first met Shannon. She seemed to be one of those girls that was just infatuated with me from the moment we met. I remember that I offered her a Hershey's Kiss, but that's as far as it went.

I think either for my 17th birthday, just before leaving home for college, or possibly using money I earned that summer or maybe even just as a random gift from my father, I acquired an early word processor, which was basically a typewriter with a black and white liquid crystal screen that was maybe five rows of characters high. I think it stored files on floppy disks, which was obviously quite valuable in college. In fact, I earned money both typing and completely writing papers for other students, most of whom had no typing proficiency, and at least one of whom had little writing proficiency.

When I got to college in the fall of 1990, I didn't have a computer, and I didn't have any plans to study computer information systems or computer science. In fact, I thought that I was nowhere near smart enough - I had never learned any assembly language and I wasn't very good at math. I don't even know whether I actually used computer labs on campus in my first year. These were the days of IBM PCs and DOS - Windows didn't really get poplare until at least 1992. There weren't even a lot of computers available on campus, and most of them were DEC or even VAX machines.

For the first year, I lived in a dormitory on campus. There were seventeen guys on my floor - two units on each end with two bedrooms, each for two people, one "single" bedroom where I lived, and the rest two-bedroom units.

While I was living in the single, I met a girl nicknamed Scout, apparently after the character in To Kill a Mockingbird for some reason. She was quite unattractive, but we ended up having sex in my room one night. Even then, it was clear that we were not a match. Afterwards, I made a vague attempt to have a relationship with her, but it never went anywhere.

At some point, Hollywood Dave (a guy on my floor that was from Hollywood) had an IBM PS/2 (Intel x86 architecture) with Compuserve, but to be honest, the Internet wasn't very interesting to me at the time - it seemed to be something for researchers and people interested in communications and consuming media, which weren't exactly my interests. I didn't realize its potential for education until a few years later when I realized my major was worthless and decided to try to get a second major in computer science.

At the same time, I was reading books on C and C++. I don't remember what computer where I first used these softwares, but I used discounts at the school bookstore to buy Borland Turbo C++ (which I think also must have supported C) and eventually Microsoft Macro Assembler (MASM, for x86 assembler). I remember loving the Turbo C++ Integrated Development Environment, which (like MASM) ran in DOS text mode rather than as a Windows application and was amazingly fast. I was impressed with the capabilities of MASM but it was a bit too complicated and architecture-specific; I'm generally more productive in higher level languages and prefer to avoid platform specifics, such as which memory addresses to peek and poke to read and set screen colors. In fact, I never really liked graphics programming. I knew that graphics involves logic, I was more interested in programming applications than graphics.

Humboldt had long winter breaks, so I basically forgot about Shannon until maybe February. She sat down next to me in the J (the cafeteria) and basically offered to come to my room for sex. At this point, I was still living in a single, which meant that I didn't have a roommate. My friend Dave, who lived on my floor, had given me a device that he had made that powered three different electrical outlets variably based on an audio input signal. I had hooked this up to Christmas lights and my room was like a disco. I remember people walking by my window and requesting tunes. Shannon came over and grinded on me until I came in my pants.

I sold my single to a guy that didn't really fit in at the dorms. He was really into road biking, where most people at HSU that rode bikes preferred moutnain biking. I remember opening a curtain in the common shower area once and finding him shaving his legs. Apparently, this improves performance, but it sure seemed gay to me at the time.

I moved in with Dave, which was good and bad. Dave was from Hollywood, I think from a relatively wealthy family, which is a very different culture than Humboldt. He smoked about as much weed as I did, and I don't remember him ever drinking alcohol. He was known for having a cocaine habit though.

Dave was quite a character. In fact, he was a descendant of a famous vaudevillian comedian, actor, and singer, and relevant traits seemed to run in his family. Years later, he was imprisoned for five years for some kind of crime that I believe involved trafficking fentanyl. He contacted me when he got out, when I was living in Portland, and came to my house for a visit.

At a party, I met a girl that I really liked. We didn't talk much, but we kissed a lot. She lived in the dorm building next to mine. I made her a Valentine's card and wrote a note that was probably a bit to intense. I never heard back from her.

I enjoyed classes in philosophy and logic, but as soon as I saw my first physics book, I knew that I needed to change majors. I bounced around a bit, including an attempt at journalism, but this seemed to take the fun out of writing.

this section is out of place in chronological order

Eventually I ended up in Child Development with a focus on Psychology. I thought that I would end up administering a daycare, but later realized that men aren't really accepted in that industry anymore. There was one other guy in the Child Development program and he ended up dropping. Most of the women were pretty far from appealing, but to be honest, that's true of most women in Humboldt.

My psychology focus was pathology, and I think I was mostly there to try to understand what had gone wrong in my own personal development. I've never used my psychology training professionally, but it was enlightening and I think very useful. In fact, I think that everyone should study psychology, especially topics like defense mechanisms and to try to understand human motivations. Currently, politicians and technology companies are using their knowledge of psychology against the human race. It's impossible to fight this, but awareness can be reduce its impact on individuals.

The small school size worked to my advantage. //TODO: Jim

For at least the first two years, I took mostly general education classes

I also don't remember when I bought my first PC, which had an AMD 486DX40 (an advanced x86 processor with a math coprocessor at 40Mhz), which came with Windows 95. I couldn't afford a sound card, so I actually connected a potentiometer for volume control and installed a sound driver that used the PC speaker. I think I eventually bought a SoundBlaster. I think this machine had a 56K modem. At this time, I felt like I knew a lot about x86 hardware, and I earned my first money in computing by submitting a letter to PC Magazine correcting them for writing that it's OK to switch the powerstrip off to turn off printers (probably from reading a manual or magazine, I had learned InkJet or BubbleJet printers use a power down process to dry the nozzles or something).

After the 486 disappeared, I inherited or acquired access to a couple of portable computers including one of those big boxy IBM 286 things and something else that was like a black and white laptop with a 300 baud modem.

I studied child development and psychology in college. I guess that Explorer must have been an x86 because I eventually brought it to college and used it to work with students in the child development lab. At this point I realized that it's not really appropriate to expose young children to technology very much.

After five years in college, I realized that I didn't have very good career prospects and decided to try to get a second major in Computer Science. I was somehow able to skip some prerequisites, but since I had wasted credits during the first couple of years of college, this still would have taken another year and a half to two years. I remember that I had to apply for an email account and to get access to the DEC and VAX machines.

On the first day of my first class on Relational Database Management Software (RDBMS) and Structured Query Language (SQL, a programming language used to access such databases), the instructor (Jim, though I also had computing teachers named Chip and Hal) said that he was looking for a student assistant. I approached him after class, and apparently, I was the only person that applied for the job.

For an assignment in that Jim's class, I developed an RDBMS contact management application that I named Tacticom. I got more than 90% credit on that project, but I felt like Jim hadn't looked at it very closely. He had a PhD in programmer productivity and later said that I was in the top 90% of programmers that he had ever seen, which really seemed unrealistic to me.

Jim was sometimes not present for his computer lab classes, so led some of those. I also managed his website on a Windows NT 4 machine and graded papers. I remember him being upset at me once for grading using straight math rather than on a curve, because apparently the test was to hard or confusing or he hadn't covered the material.

Towards the end of that first year, I asked Jim if I could use him as a reference for my summer job search. He said that I shouldn't bother looking for a job, but should just work at a consultancy that he ran on the side. The name of the company was Meta Systems, but there was a dispute over the name, because someone else had already taken it.

This was in 1995 or 1996. My college was small and inexpensive, not known for technology or educational prowess. I remember feeling like I was in some foreign world while walking accross campus with Jim while he was talking on a cellphone, which was a very rare device in that population at the time.

1991

While I was living with Dave, one of the girls from upstairs came to the room in a bathrobe and told me that she wanted me to take her virginity. She was somewhat overweight and not super attractive, which may have influenced my decision, but I still felt bad about taking Karen's virginity, so I declined.

I think on March 10 of 1991, which Shannon and I later recorded as our anniversary, Brooke brought her to the room that I shared with Dave. He had run into her in the cafeteria. Supposedly, over Christmas, she had gone to Shasta and then broken up with her boyfriend in Carmel Valley. I think this was the first time that I ever had sex doggystyle, which was great, I think for both of us. She left a stain on my comforter. We started seeing each other constantly.

As usual, my memory of this period is a little hazy, so I likely have things listed in the wrong years and in the wrong order.

A guy on the same floor as me in the dorms was known as Stretch Mike because of his hackeysacking skills. His father worked for United Grocers and that was supposed to help us get us jobs at Winco, a grocery store that had recently opened in Eureka, not far from the college. I had to complete some kind of psychological profile during the application process and I think I was too honest to pass. Specifically, I remember a question about whether I would turn in a fellow employee that stole food to feed their children.

I also applied at the Samoa Cookhouse, which was a huge old restaurant that had been a kitchen for loggers when they were cutting down the old growth forests in that region decades earlier. I ended up working as a busboy. Mike and I had rented a house together, but Shannon and Mike had issues. Mike had a shaggy main and tried to grow facial hair. I once threatened him "I'll kick your woooly ass" and then it was time for Shannon and me to move out.

We rented a really nice but expensive appartment in Arcata that was ADA compliant, meaning that it had special characteristics for disabled people, such as wide doors. Shannon cooked a complete Thanksgiving dinner there.

While we were living there, we broke up for a while. I don't remember how we managed living arrangements, but we both basically started seeing other people. Shannon was intersted in a guy named Jupiter and I spent some time with a girl that had immigrated from Mexico. She was pleasant, but I think she was still a virgin. I had learned not to take that from people that I wouldn't be with forever, but I wanted sex, so we stopped seeing each other. Shannon and I somehow got back together.

1992 - 1995

My college years were similar enough that I can't remember exactly what happened in which year. I think that during the third year I lived in an apartment with Dave, my former roommate from the dorms. The first semester of that schoolyear, Shannon went to Arizona for some kind of exchange program. We tried the long-distance relationship, but it was stressful. By that time, I was taking Child Development classes, and there was one girl that wanted me. She had a boyfriend, but even so, she told me things such as that she let him do anal and one day she kissed me in the computer lab. I wasn't interested, and more importantly, I was not going to cheat on Shannon.

Shannon did cheat on me, but she said it was only "above the waste", whatever that meant, and whether it was true or not. Apparently, she still wanted to be together, which may be one reason that she flew back to Humboldt for Thanksgiving.

Dave had a deck of playing cards with pornographic pictures on them. I "borrowed" them sometimes. One day I had finished whacking off in the living room. Dave came home and told me that it smelled like sex, clearly suspecting exactly what I had done.

Before Christmas, Dave made mataza ball soup, but he left the pot on the stove. I moved the pot in front of the door to his room. He told me that he understood why I had done this, but he was clearly upset with what I had done, and I think our relationship started to deteriorate. Shannon moved in with us, which made things worse, because even though I had the smaller bedroom, Dave thought that we should pay more.

From then on, Shannon and I mostly lived together in various apartments. For a short time, we were in a small house where I somehow saw another college girl with her shirt off in the neighboring house, which was really exciting for me.

1993

Shannon worked for Campus Arts. One of their responsibilities was managing musical performances on campus, which got me into some shows. In 1993, I saw Cypress Hill at a small venue. Hollywood Dave passed a joint to them while they were on stage.

1995

In the fall of 1995, I think after Shannon had graduated but as part of her efforts towards becoming an art teacher, she rented her own place and did something like an internship at a high school about 45 minutes south of the college that we had attended together. I moved in with Shannon's friend Donna, who had a boa constricter, hermit crabs, and a boyfriend named Ben, who I think was of Chinese or half Chinese, but not from China.

We lived next to a waste cleanup site, so the two-bedroom apartment was pretty cheap. Shannon would visit on weekends, but I never went down to see her, which upset her.

Donna had a laptop computer, possibly with a black and white screen, or maybe I only remember black and white because I mostly used gopher and sometimes lynx the terminal over its 300 baud modem. I had to telnet to the schools servers that had these Unix applications. Gopher was similar enough to the world wide web that I'm not sure what the differences were. Lynx is a text-only browser for consoles.

A junkyard cat used to visit us. It was a nice animal, but it was disgustingly filthy, and I was afraid that it would turn on me at any moment.

Donna and I generally got along, but had some falling outs. She listened to one Blind Mellon song constantly, which drove me nuts. One time I left Cream's Glad on repeat by mistake.

I had a fishtank at the time, with a dojo fish in it. One day I found it on the floor. Apparently it had tried to escape. I released it into the Arcata March nearby. I'm sure that a bird ate it almost instantly after I left.

I can't remember if Donna's snake died or escaped, but I know that at least one of the hermit crabs died, poossibly from dehydration. What remained of it was something like chalk.

1996

Honda - lent bmw rat

shared appartment with Donna Shannon worked at a school in Scotia or whatever

mike elliot house downloading porn

shannon goes to arizona and comes back for thanksgiving dave's porno cards dave's matza ball soup

broke up, mexican girl from French class, jupiter

The second summer after college, I lived with my parents in Cotati. I rode my bike to a job as a busboy at the Red Lion Hotel in nearby Rhonert Park.

I also delivered room service. For some part of the summer, a crew stayed at the hotel while they filmed the the movie "Nowhere to Run" with Jean-Claude Van Damme. I somehow obtained a call sheet that showed the working title "Pals". The large crew including Rosanne Arquette would sometimes have breakfast together and a waiter gave me a receipt with Van Damme's signature.

I once delivered room service to Van Damme. His tanning beds had arrived recently. He had ordered flat water, but was frustrated because the woman that took the order was hispanic and had sent me with sparkling water. He was polite to me and even called me sir. I also got something like a nod or maybe even a hello from Ted levine, as well as a signed receipt, and delivered nachos to Kieran Culkin and his family by the pool. Eventually, I took shannon to a theater in Humboldt to see the movie. It's not exactly Bloodsport, but neither is that movie Van Damme's worst work - he was clearly trying to develop from an action hero to an actual actor.

While working there, the waiter that had given me Van Damme's signature came into the dishroom once, started sifting around in the trash, pulled something out, and put it into a styrofoam container, explaining "the customer wanted the rest of his omelette."

Most other summers, I worked as a busboy at the Samoa Cookhouse. Sometimes I worked as a dishwasher. One day, one of them pointed out that I sweat so much that it was visible on my hat. Washing dishes really sucked because of the hot water and the butter that never seemed to really come off of anything. Actually, they used a product called Flavor Fry that had a particular smell that stuck with me after work. For years afterwards I had nightmares that I was still working there.

One summer, Shannon and I lived in Campus Apartments, which was a real shithole of a place, but it was cheap and on campus. One day, for completely unknown reasons, I walked naked out onto the shared deck in front of our unit and made some kind of howling noise. A girl that lived next door to us happend to step out at that moment and kindof laughed at me. At some point I must have collected my Lego collection from my parents, because I built an entire city in that apartment. One time Shannon's friend Devanie, who had a boyfriend, came over and the three of us had a sexual experience together, but I only played with her huge breasts and had sex with Shannon in front of her. I remember that she was impressed. Another time, I went downstairs to see Daisy, a girl with whom I smoked weed. Somehow I had learned that she had pierced nipples. I asked to see them and she obliged, but nothing ever happened between us. I had had a class with a hippie named Morgan. One day I had pulled a marijuana bud out of his sweater and handed it to him. He lived in an apartment above us, and one day I found a bud on the railing of the deck in front of our unit.

For Christmas break, Shannon and I would typically go to her parents' house in Carmel Valley rather than going to my parents' house in Cotati. One year I did show up in Cotati with my friend Brooke to surprise my parents. My step-mother answered the door. Her specific greeting was, "John! When are you leaving?"

Shannon's parents were unusual. Among other things, her mother was a facepainter and har father was a carpenter who also conducted some kind of welfare fraud. They had a decent house and a decent lifestyle - Carmel Valley is not exactly Carmel by the Sea, but it's not a cheap.

Her father's name was Mike. He smoked weed. One year, he carved pipes out of deer antlers and gave one to me. It looked cool, but it wasn't great for smoking.

I seem to remember taking Legos to their house at least once. I also read computer books there. I thought it was strange that they knew that I was having sex with their daughter in their house.

Mike had some kind of injury from a woodworking lathe. He seemed to sit in the living room and watch TV almost constantly. He introduced me to certain TV shows and movies. One was Yojimbo, Japanese for "bodyguard", which is about a samurai that has lost his master. A Fistfull of Dollars with Clint Eastwood is basically a scene-for-scene Western remake of Yojimbo.

In general, times with Shannon and her parents were good for us, but there was often some apparent tension in their relationship.

//TODO: photo of self at Shannon's

At one point, Shannn and I lived at a really crappy apartment complex off campus that I remember being known as The Greens, but which seems to have changed its name. One of our neighbors was a young couple that we called the McDonalds because they both worked at McDonalds. We could often hear them having sex, which was somewhat disturbuing.

While we were there, I met a Mexican girl that lived in the dorms. I don't remember if I asked permission or just told Shannon, but I went to see her one night. We didn't have sex, but we did play around in ways that I considered to be inappropriate for myself. Even if Shannon and I were facing difficulties, I felt that I was in a committed relationship and that seeing someone else was wrong.

this is all certainly out of place and appers to have been duplicated for parsing into this timeline

2009

At the end of April, 2009, I turned 36 years old. This was my third tripple-ox year, though I don't remember feeling especially powerful or capable.

I don't remember the exact timeline, but over the years, I was able to sell bits and pieces of Sitecore USA, which was eventually responsible for about half of the software sales. In the end, Sitecore (Denmark) bought Sitecore USA and I cashed out completely, I believe around the time that the company was valued at a billion dollars. I think I probably pulled about $5-6M total equity out of Sitecore, but I also had a salary around $200K at the end and a bonus of at least $450K one year. Sometimes it's better for a corporation to distribute earnings rather than pay corporate taxes. At the time of that bonus and one of the bigger equity transactions, I was moving from Albany back to Portland and my partners had advised me to stop in Nevada for a few months, which saved me several hundred thousand dollars in state income taxes. Suck it, California; you and your open source/Java spirit didn't do much to enable our success.

We got pregnant again in 2009. Susan resisted, but there was no way that I was going to try to raise a child in a condo overlooking a freeway. When we had moved into the place, we had two of those Ionic Breeze devices from Sharper Image. When I cleaned the blades in the units, I was disgusted by the black grime that I washed off. There was also evidence of pollution around the windows themselves.

I rented a house in Albany, which for me was within easy walking distance from our condo. We were too cheap to rent a moving truck. We used the Honda for smaller things, and some of the larger things I literally walked over on a hand truck or something. I wrot that we moved things, but it was actually me that did all the work. One could argue that this was because Susan was pregnant, but the reality was that she didn't want to move. I think that she had convinved me to buy that condo knowing that she would want to raise children there.

One of the nice things about the Gateview condiminium complex was a facility called Albany Hill Realty that had an office on the property. A really friendly and helpful guy named Alan there helped us find a couple with a child that rented the condo from us.

The house that we rented and the landlord from whom we rented it from were both great. There were four bedrooms when we really could have gotten away with two. There was a large living room that I filled with house plants. The house was walking distance to the main streeat through Albany, which had bookstores, restaurants, and so forth. I bought the entire Tintin collection available. I also started buying Legos for their future.

John did not arrive when expected. About two weeks later it was time to induce labor. At this time, Susan invited her parents to visit. Apparenly she thought that they would be of assistance, but in general they're just a burden.

Susan and I went to the Kaiser hospital in Walnut Creek for the delivery. Having studied child development, I was aware of numerous risks to the health of both the child and the mother. I would have avoided drugs, but I think Susan had an epidural.

Everything was proceeding normally. The doctors provided some kind of timeline, and after several hours in the hospital, I went out to get some sandwiches.

When I returned, I was told that there was an emergency and rushed into an operating room. The baby's oxygen level had dropped and Susan was having an emergency Caesarean. There was a sheet between me and her lower half, but I still saw a great deal of blood and tissue. Eventually, the doctors exracted - and unfolded - John. He was huge, 23 inches long, with a heard at least half an inch larger than the doctors had estimated - probably far to big to fit through Susan.

Afterwards, I returned to the house, where Susan's parents immediately started discussing whether my son John would attend Harvard or Yale. I was disgusted; I was concerned first whether he would be healthy and second whether he would be happy.

Within a day or two, I brought John and Susan home from the hospital. I didn't like spending time with Susan's parents, especially alone. One night, I walked to a bar, which is unlike me. I met a couple of black guys. I got into a very deep conversation with one of them, as each of us seemed to have a sense of empathy - the ability to feel other people's emotions and possibly to even help to alleviate them. I have a theory that some people who have experienced significant childhood tramua may develop this ability, but it can be draining for them.

On the walk home, I had something like an out of body experience, as if my consciousness was floating down the street where my head was, but not part of my body.

When I got home, the house was ridiculously hot and John was screaming. Susan and her parents are always cold, so they had turned the heat up to almost 80 degrees farenheit. I immediately took John outside so that he could cool down, and then took him to the basement. I was angry that these people seemed to have no idea how to care for a child and would ignore an infant screaming because they apparently didn't know what to do. I almost yelled at Susan's mother: 68 degrees, which I had heard is the optimal temperature for brain development. Of course, the child needs clothing and waddling, and the actual optimal temperature likely varies by individual, but infants are unable to regulate their own temperatures.

Again, while I did not feel like an expert, I had studied child development for two years. I undestood the importance of breastfeeding both for infant health and for mother-infant bonding. Susan didn't seem to take breastfeeding very seriously, especially at first. I think she actually didn't like it, and almost immediately started using formula, apparently not being aware of or concerned about the disadvantages. John had trouble latching, and Susan didn't seem to produce very much milk. We worked with a lactation nurse, but John never got enough breast milk, especially for such a large time.

We tried to follow the hospital's instructions in terms of quantity of formula, but John often cried, clearly wanting more. I am ashamed to admit that at first we probably didn't give him enough food, thinking that we wre supposed to stick to some kind of prescribed feeding regimen. I would say that most infants that are not at some specific risk of overeating should probably eat as much as they want.

Shortly after the delivery, I organized a surprise party for Susan. I even connected with and invited a friend of hers from college, which eventually led to them being friends again, at least temporarily. That friend was on the east coast and could not attend, but sent a fabric gift for John that he slept with almost every night for approximately the next fourteen years.

I did not invite my parents to visit, nor to the party. Actually, I invited my dad, but I really didn't want my step-mother there. For one thing, I really don't like her. For another, she's a smoker, and I didn't want her or my brother smelling like tobacco anywhere near my child. This really upset my father, who chose not to come alone. In some ways, I feel like his relationship with me deteriorated even further from there. I have never understood how he could care so much about that woman with whom I had so many issues, so much more than he seems to care about his own children.

Part of the surprise was that we started the day by going to the city (how many people in the bay area call San Francisco) for dim sum, which is Chinese for something like "heart's delight". This allowed some other friends to organize the house, where I had created a slideshow of things like the baby shower and other family memories.

My maternal grandfather, Ben Gardiner, was a big star At Susan's party. He loved telling people that he was a model and an actor and had been in the US military in Europe during World War II.

2010

Kaiser had a good maternity policy, but Sitecore didn't offer any relevent benefits at all, and Susan wanted to go back to work. Bjarne or his wife recommended a woman that did childcare, I think from the Hmong commuity of Laos, or somewhere in southeast asia. I often worked from home. One day when she returned from the park, John had suffered a significant facial injury. I didn't understand how this was possible, as he couldn't crawl yet and certainly couldn't walk - what could she have done? I assume that she was talking with friends or on the phone, ignoring his care, and he somehow escaped from the stroller and fell on his face.

Shortly afterwards, John we put John in a daycare nearby. I think the owner may have been Mexican. I had a good feeling about the place, and John stayed there until we left Albany.

I remember at one point while we were in that house Susan asked me about whether I was happy to have a child. I said that I could still go either way, which really upset her.

Relatively early, I started to get some bad feelings about John's social development. I can't remember any specific incidents, but he did not seem to develop emotional bonds the way I had expected and seen with other children. He seemed to lack compassion for others. I raised these concerns with Susan, but she discounted them completely.

It was only 2010, before smartphones and tablets were everywhere. I think we did a good job of keeping John of screens including the television, but we did buy some stupid "Your Baby Can Read" DVDs and let him watch those, which I think was a total waste. I actually think that program was a fraud; babies can't speak, let alone read, and expecting them to memorize even a single character seems developmentally inappropriate. This was a sign that Susan's tigermom Chinese focus on education was overpowering what I now consider to be my better sense in raising children: they shouldn't be around technology, they need opportunity for stimulation but don't need instruction and constant stimulation, they need to get bored and follow their own interests, and they absolutely don't need technology.

Coming from China's one child policy, Susan had been an only child, and didn't seem to understand the value of siblings. Coming from a large family, I could not picture myself raising a single child, and we agreed to have another.

Paul, who was the Chief Marketing Officer at Sitecore USA, convinced management that the company would have a trade show. This required that I give a presentation. I titled it "Ten Things You Didn't Know That You Could Do With Sitecore", but it was more like twenty things. I had about an hour, which required me to give an absolute onslaught of words, and I think some number of live demonstrations of custom code that I had developed.

I practiced in the living room, surrounded by houseplants. The event was in Boston. As it happened, a volcano named Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland errupted, which interfered with air traffic from Europe. While I was in the hote, Lars, who was one of the founders of Sitecore in Denmark and basically my technical counterpart there, called me and told me that I would have to give the keynote speach, which absolutely terrified me. Luckily, he was just kidding.

Michael, who was the CEO for the Danish company, had the penthouse at the hotel, and I went to a party there. Sitecore was certainly doing well.

I could be significantly off, but when it was time for me to speak, I feel like there were at least 300 people in the crowd. I think I made one major mistake, which was to ask people to interrupt me with questions, but as soon as someone did, I probably rudely contradicted myself by asking them to hold their questions until the end.

I think by this time, many of the people in the audience alredy knew who I was from my work blogging and helping people on the Sitecore developer forums. I had started on the forums in 2004 and the first blog post I can find is from 2008, so I had likely helped dozens or possibly hundreds of people in the audience.

The crowd seemed to really like my speach. I don't know if I ever answered the original question, but someone asked me how I had done it so well. I replied that I had practiced in my living room full of plants, and then just pretended that they were all plants. As the audience likely consisted of somewhat shy developers, this joke went over relatively well.

At the conference, a woman approached me and Bjarne and offered to write a book about Sitecore. One of our competitors, Ektron (where sales lead Jason had worked before joining Sitecore), had release a book. This seemed like more of a marketing opportunity than something that would actually help developers. She had already published one book with WROX, which would simplify the process of developing a relationship with the publisher.

2011

In 2011, we got pregnant with Ben. During the entire pregnancy, I felt like I could never get Susan to drink enough water. Ben was born in August of 2011 at a Kaiser hospital in Oakland with no issues, I believe by Caesarean (best avoided in general, but if you've had to have one, the subsequent births should probably go the same way).

I have a sequence of photos of John when he saw Ben for the first time. In a matter of seconds, they go from a sort of excitement to a sort of disappointment. Maybe he realized that Ben would take much of his mother's attention, or maybe that his younger brother was a baby, not another child his age.

Probably at least halfway through 2011, it started to feel like the author might not complete the Sitecore book on schedule. I saw some early drafts and was disappointed.

I also decided that I didn't want to raise my boys in the Bay Area. There was simply too much concrete, not enough greenery, and too much time spent driving. Plus, it was ridiculously expensive for the quality of life. I am not sure how I did it, but I convinced Susan to move back to Portland.

Susan worked with our friend Karen in Portland to find a house. Kare was the wife of a guy named Rolf that I had met while teaching a class in Portland during my early days working at Sitecore. He had eventually worked for Sitecore, but that didn't last long. Rolf was not a typical American guy, which generally interests me, but he was also kindof creepy.

Especially relative to what we could afford in the bay area, the house on the east side of Portland was amazing. It was in a great area, but it was in a dense neigbhorood, which never appealed to me. It had been built in 2004, which was relatively new construction compared to almost anything I had lived in recently. There was a master bedroom with a great bathroom, two small bedrooms, and a huge laundry room on the upper floor, two living rooms and an office on the main floor, a finished basement with windows that had a big media room, a smaller office, and a large closet with a wine rack, as well as a tandem garage (big enough for two cars parked end to end).

When Eric, a Danish guy who was one of the founding partners at Sitecore USA (and the father of the CEO in Denmark, Michael) found out that I was moving, he suggested that I spend some time in a state with no income taxes, as Sitecore was going to have some kind of equity event. I rented a house

Despite the fact that it saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars, gave ys a great experience living near Lake Tahoe, and resulted in a much better home and lifestyle in Portland, Susan eventually strongly resisted the move. The city has a lot of cool things, but it's a better place to visit than to live, and by now it was clear that we would never live in San Francisco. I guess she thought the bay area was a better place for her, for educating the boys, for what people thought of her stats, and things like that.

This meant that I had to do all the work, both for getting to Incline Village and for getting from there to Portland. At the same time, Bjarne and I decided that I should write the book, as the original author seemed to have become unreliable and was not producing the quality that we needed. So I had at least a new child coming, a book project, and multiple relocations in the second half of 2011. I rented a house in Incline Village, on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe.

I think that for the entire time that we were in Incline Village, Susan was on maternity rather than working from home. I might have sometimes slept on the bottom floor of the rental house in Albany, but while we were in Incline, Susan and I lived in separate rooms. I don't know if she suffered post-partum depression or was upset about the move or what, but she was absolutely terrible during this time. I remember that she referred to our second son Ben - an infant - as disgusting.

John, who was two years old at the time, attended a Christian daycare. I had purchased a road bicycle with a child seat on the front. Some of my best memories from this period or of Jon and me riding through the forest singing song like The Beatles' Yellow Submarine at high volume on the way back from daycare. At the Christmas paegeant, it was clear that he was a discipline problem relative to the other children.

Brooke and his wife and their children visited for Thanksgiving. My family came for Christmas. Unfortunately, there was almost no snow that winter, at least until we moved in early January.

2012

As soon as we moved into the Portland house, the basement flooded. I had experts come and assess the situation. They told me that the cause was hydrostatic pressure from below the foundation and got me to commit to a significant and expensive project that involved jackhammering trenches throughout the foundation to install drains connecting drains to a sump pump in the garage.

Some time after they left, it became clear that hydrostatic pressure had not been the issue. One day I was in the basement and I saw water pooling outside of one of the windows.

When the house had been built, Portland had had some stupid building codes that prevented drainage of rainwater to either the street or the sewer. This required a drywell on the property, which is like an underground storage tank that holds water while it disippates into the ground. All of the water that landed on the roof of of this huge house in Portland, which gets some incredible storms and more than 40 inches of rain per year on average, routed into that drywell.

The drywell was in the back yard, which sloped down towards the house. When the drywell filled up, it overflowed, and the water came straight into the concrete box around that basement window. When it reached the window sill, it leaked into the basement.

As soon as I saw the water, I went out and bought a pump and a hose and drained it, but I think it may have already been too late, because I eventually pulled up the carpet that apparently had not been removed by the conractors that had installed the drainage system. In doing so, I found stained carpet pad that indicated that the previous owners must have experienced such a flood that they never disclosed.

I thought about sewing the contractors. I threatened to sue the previous owner and got some money from them. I had different contractors come and install a french drain around the back yard, with water draining to the street.

John attended a daycare that Susan selected. It was far from our house, requiring a trip on Stark Street. Somehow, this was generally my responsibilty - Susan had wanted children, but she could not support them financially and wanted me to have most of the responsibility. I referred to this commute as my Stark Trek.

Ben went to a different daycare that was closer. Eventually, John moved to a different daycare that I think was about the same distance but not as bad a commute.

I think it was in the the summer of 2012, at her father's property on Sonoma mountain, my step-sister Sierra held a reunion for my Great Oak class, who would have been mostly turning 40 years old that year. I took my son John. I don't remember many details, but it was interesting and entertaining to reconect temporarily with so many people from my grade and how their lives had progressed. I particularly enjoyed swimming in a pond with a rope swing. I think John enjoyed riding in Ulysses' old Ford Bronco that had the chop topped off. Other than meeting with Stephen once or twice and a few text exchanges, I have not kept in touch with any of those people, just as I have not been in contact with anyone from high school and have only had mininmal contact with Dave and Brooke from college. Distance makes connection hard and I have other interests.

After that summer, John enrolled at Portland Montessori School, which was walking distance from our house. Before enrollment, he met Mr. George, who would be his teacher. John was playing with a figure that Mr. George referred to as a duck. John corrected him by informing him that it was a drake (a male duck).

2013

John and Susan were getting into conflicts more freqeuently. One day, she wanted him to wear a parka to school. It wasn't very cold. John, being a true Pacific Northwesterner, wold probably rather have worn shorts. She basically forced him to wear the jacket. There were also days when John really didn't want to come home from school, probably partly because there were no other kids his age to play with, but I think also because of issues with his mother.

As it turned out, Shannon's friend Donna, with whom I had shared an apartment in Humboldt in the year spanning 1995 and 1996, was living in Portland with Ben, who she had been dating then. They had enrolled their child at PMS. Donna and I talked once or twice, but never in any depth.

In April of 2013, I turned 40 years old. In August, Ben turned two and in October John turned four.

For my 40th birthday, we went out to dinner with Rolf and Karen. Rolf and I often rode bicycles and talked about dangers and incidents riding in Portland. I'm not sure what triggered it, but Susan was definitely in one of her malignant states that night. I remember one comment, I think something to the effect that cars should have right of way and bicyclists should watch out. She must have said various other callous, rude, and hurtful things. I ended up getting so upset with her that I left them in the restaurant and drove home.

I believe that I took Ben to daycare on the bicycle once, which was somewhat dangerous due to car density. Then I left the bicycle in front of the house overnight and it got stolen. It was a nice neighborhood, but it was not far from a MAX (Metropolitan Area Express) train line. Portland was nicer at the time than it is now, but even then it had many degenerates that would do almost anything to get their next heroin fix.

Susan was always arranging activities with the kids. I rarely wanted to be involved, but felt compelled to attend.

At this time, weed was stil illegal without a medical permit. I think I used craigslist to find a source that would buy medical marijuana and deliver it to me.

I still maintained some fantasy that my children would like Star Wars, especially the first two movies that had had such an impact on my childhood and me. I ordered some posters online and took them to an expensive framing shop.

While I was waiting for the framing work, I walked to what I thought was a convenience store nearby known as The Bodega. Strangely, there were beer taps and books, so I had a drink and started reading. The cashier was a young black guy with dreadlocks. When I asked him if he knew where to get any weed, he rejected me. I stayed around for a while and eventually he took me into the back and sold me some weed. Judah and I exchanged contact information and this random stranger has turned out to be one of best friends for at least ten years.

It turned out that Judah made music, especially hip hop and rap. Shortly after we met, I saw him perform at a live show held at the Bodega, which was a great party. At some point he came to my house and met my kids at around this age.

It was probably this year that I had some people build build a treehouse around the plumb tree in the back yard. It wasn't actually a treehouse, because it was on the ground, but it was built around the tree. It was really cool and high-quality, with complex railing worked designed to look like spiderwebs, as my boys were into Spiderman. I thought I would use it for writing, so there was a removable desk where I could put a computer, but I generally only used it to smoke weed.

The guy that managed the project was named Skyler, but the guy that did all the work was named Devan. Devan definitely had an eye for detail and quality, but towards the end, he said that he wasn't even measuring for the railing anymore - just eyeballing angles, which is pretty impressive.

//TODO: picture of treehouse

Devan and I got to be friends. I eventually lent him money to buy property for his marijuana refining business, as there are challenges obtaining finances in that industry. We have stayed friends since then, typically getting lunch together every few months.

I have a video from this age that demonstrates the issues that I had with John. He had received a plastic toy designed like an excavator but large enough to ride. Ben is using the toy and John hassles him for it, clearly not concerned for his brother or any sense of actual fairness.

Around this time, I have a memory of giving the boys some toys. Instead of playing with the items themselves, Ben was most interested in a piece of the packaging that had the Star Wars log on it. While I continued to buy some of the lego sets, it was around this time that I started to feel hopeless about Star Wars.

One day I was carrying Ben down the stairs. The stairs were carpeted and I was wearing socks, which resulted in a slip. I did everything I could to protect Ben, holding him high and falling hard on my ass. As we were falling, he looked directly into my eyes and asked "Dad, are you OK?" The differences between my two boys are amazing.

At some point, Susan explained to me that her father's mother was a wicked person that they tried to keep shut in. I feel that there was something malignant in one of her X chromosomesthat somehow mostly skipped Susan's father but got into Susan and John. I honestly think that this condition reduces their potential for compassion for others. I think that Ben must have gotten Susan's mother's X chromosome instead.

At some point, Susan's parents came to visit. We tried to arrange their visits for periods when I was not home, both so that they could support Susan in my absence, and so that I wouldn't have to deal with them. It's often difficult for me to get straight stories, but while I was gone, Susan's dad dropped or fell with Ben, which left a scar on his forehead. It seems that the family intentionally confused the two falling incidents such that Ben holds me responsible for this scar.

Sitecore symposiums, speaker training work was starting to not work for me blogging the book

2014

In April of 2014, I turned 41 years old. In August, Ben turned three and in October John turned five. We moved John to Oregon Episcopal School (OES) on the east side and Ben started at Portland Montessori school. Ben had a different teacher, I think named Mr. Kirk, who was much better at teaching Montessori including math and manners than Mr. George had been. OES was certainly a waste of money for pre-kindergarden, but we had heard that to ensure he could get a seat there in later grades, we had to enroll him early.

Most days, I had to drive John from our house on the east side of Portland to his school on the West side because Susan's job was so important to her. Then I would drive back. Then I would have to do the same to collect him in the afternoon.

The commute was brutal, and the Subaru was not exactly fuel-efficient. I ended up leasing a Ford CMAX, which was a small plug-in hybrid that was actually pretty fun to drive.

John had some discipline issues, including one incident where he apparently threatened all of the girls in the class with physical harm. I don't think he meant anything serious, but I really don't understand how he learned such behavior, which is completely unlike anything that I have ever done or would hope to ever do.

I had an electrician install two car chargers: one in the driveway and one in the garage. When Susan found out about this plan, she went balistic and we argued for hours, possibly days. It turned out that she thought that car chargers were the size of gasoline fuel pumps and that having one in the driveway would be unsightly.