bio
Born: 13 January 1970, Meridian, Mississippi (no joke). I don't remember much about Mississipi but it's always a trip to see someone's face when I tell them that. One time I said that and by way of explanation gave my standard, "Dad was in the Navy..." bit. The man nodded, then scrunched his eyebrows and said, "But Meridian is nowhere near the coast..."
"Ahh," I said, "If I told you what he was really doing in Mississippi, I'd have to kill you." (Actually, it was just a training area.)
Anyway, right now I live in the Dormont area of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with my wife Barb Alsko and our cats, La Choy and Jackson. Barb and I have known each other since 1996 and I can easily say she is the best thing that ever happened to me.
Lifetime residences (oldest to most recent): Pensacola, Florida; Beasville, Texas; Meridian (again); Jacksonville, Florida; Monterey, California; Bremerton, Washington; Orange Park, Florida; Alexandria, Virginia; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (three residences); Arlington, Virginia (four residences); Silver Spring, Maryland; Takoma Park, Maryland; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (again)
People ask me all the time what my favorite place to live was. I liked them all for different reasons. In Bremerton, I could walk down a big hill and be with the Puget Sound. (I was very into "be"ing back then. Transcendental meditation, all that.) I'd turn over rocks and catch the little crabs there (no bigger than the tip of my adult thumb), impale them on a hook and hope some fish was stupid enough to bite at something so hard and tasteless. Bremerton is also where I first played soccer.
However, I liked California because we went to the beach in Carmel every once in a while. Yuppie before yuppies had a name, but I knew no different. California was also the first place where I thought of myself as special because I was a good student and teachers liked me -- I know better now. My dad was home a lot of the time in Monterrey -- a very good thing.
Florida (the third time, Orange Park) saw my geekhood come into full blossom. I noticed that people teased me all the time and that I looked different than other people. I first learned what a clique was (that is, not me) and that women, even at that age, excelled at saying one thing but meaning entirely another.
We then moved to Alexandria, Virginia, which saw the darkest period of my life. I try to forget the depths I sunk to every day after school, but I can't. Freakish, addled images keep coming back to remind me that, for about eight months as a lonely, disconnected high school freshman, I followed General Hospital! I'm sure ABC is waiting to make an Afterschool Special about this horrible phenomenon. (Although it could never compare to "Stoned!" starring Scott Baio...) I would come home every single day after school, run up to my room, close the door (don't want anyone seeing!), flop in a beanbag and watch the adventures of Luke and Laura and the myriad other dimwits.
High school was typical: mostly average teachers, retarded social life, shallow attempts at deep introspection, crummy writing. Several moments do stick out, however. There were a handful of teachers whose words I still remember every once in a while: Jack Hiller, Joan Reynolds, Paul Russell and Paul Levy. I worked on the literary magazine my senior year and wrote a few things I don't entirely shudder at today.
I don't keep in touch with many of the people I knew in high school, except for Frank Feist, who I'm sure hated high school much more than I (that's him at the left looking bored; check out his web being to see more of his funky faces, if he still has them), and every once in a while Kevin Crosby.
There are people for whom high school was the high point of their lives. That would scare the hell out of me. I think that might not be as true for a school that had the quantity of overachievers mine did, but maybe it's the fact that everyone's in a controlled environment. The rules are defined and everyone's position in the social sphere is set. The scary thing about the real world is that nothing is set unless you shut yourself in a room and talk to only the same people day after day. Everything is fluid.
Enough of that. I went to college at the University of Pittsburgh because I wanted to get away from everyone in Virginia and start over. I'd never lived in Pittsburgh before and it was time to move. I enjoyed college a lot but I wished I would have done a few things differently. (Who doesn't?) At least I finished in four years. I still keep in touch with Trudy Singzon (she is tackling medical school) and a woman, Donna Kidwell, who broke my heart when I was 13 (that's okay, it healed in about two weeks -- kids are resilient at that age) who's wonderfully married with two kids and a nifty database job in Austin, Texas, the coolest place I've never been to. I used to keep in touch with a woman I used to go date, but now the only thing I've got to remember her by is a column I wrote about an argument we had, proving that you can make something of anything, no matter how trivial, if you put your mind to it.
After I graduated and took an intensive Russian course over the summer (fun!), I moved down to Arlington, Virginia with my then-girlfriend with whom I lived for a few years. I worked initially for a Political Sociologist at George Mason University, Seymour Martin Lipset. It was a good job, but I think I would have gotten more out of it (and he out of me) if I had been more academically inclined. I applied to graduate school for history but was rejected by everyone! That put a permanent damper on that thread of life.
After the 10-month stint as a Research Assistant, I temped around for a few months and then stumbled on a job at the Montgomery County Planning Department. I worked there for two years as a Transportation Planner -- actually, more of a technical writer with some planning work thrown in. It was fascinating work, although there were times when the lack of schooling in this stuff hurt. I did okay, though, but left because my contract was coming up and certain figures in management weren't filling me with confidence about my future at the organization. (Given the chance, however, I could have done some really nifty work with their website.)
I then moved on to work as a writer and computer geek at the Community Transportation Association of America -- by computer geek, I mean LAN administration, help desk type stuff, hardware repairs and upgrades, software installations and upgrades and, most fun of all, set up the web site and maintain it. Just before I left, I was able to get CTAA permanently hooked up to the net. (Trust me, it was a Big Deal.)
Also at CTAA, I wrote articles for the Community Transportation Reporter (now Community Transportation) and edit lots of reports and marketing materal. Our Community Transportation EXPO in Milwaukee was a ton of fun (I actually trained people!) but unfortunately, I didn't get to join everyone in Fort Lauderdale or Albuquerque for later EXPOs. Oh well.
I then moved on to IREX, where I worked more solidly on technical issues and really expanded my perl knowledge. (Some would say that expansion has not been all that impressive...) It was an interesting job, but the organization had a lot of issues. It was a good learning experience, though.
The main thing that happened there was meeting my colleagues, Mark and Christopher. We got along well enough and had diverse enough skills (and knew people with a little money) to form our own company, intes.net. I no longer work there, mainly due to my inability to segment work and home when working at home. But also that I wanted to work with real live human beings again. So after working at Optiron with Java full-time (with code generation and other tools using Perl along the way), moved in late 2004 to Vocollect, which is the largest company I've ever worked at. But it might also be the best, time will tell.
I'm probably best known for the open source Perl projects I started while at intes.net: OpenInteract and SPOPS, and I've got a few more projects too. They're still rolling along quite nicely. Want to help?
-- Gandhi
