Born to mildly amused parents in 1963, I was raised in Westerville, Ohio, a town known most famously for what it doesn’t have. During my formative years, I played a somewhat better than mediocre clarinet in the high school band and was in the local production of South Pacific (everyone say "awww..."), but as a general rule I didn’t offend or make an impression on anyone. Sadly, the first eighteen years of my life can summarized into this three sentence paragraph.

Because Dad bleeds scarlet and gray, I attended The Ohio State University and earned a Bachelor’s degree in Computer and Information Science in 1984. Due largely to academic inertia, I received a Master’s degree in the same subject the following year. Having mastered the art of crossing a busy street, I started working for Chemical Abstracts Service, which was just north of campus, after graduation. My last project assignment there was the company’s end-user search tool SciFinder.

After having had curiosity of Benzene derivatives satiated, I changed employers and am presently employed as a Staff Engineer at Kentrox Innovation Inc. After helping design and develop the company’s distributed scripting hardware, I’ve moved onto designing and developing their extensible, client-server application platform. I enjoy my work almost all of the time and it’s been rewarding. Okay, its not as rewarding as surgery, but I enjoy working with the people I do and there’s not much blood.

Somewhere along the line, I got a life. I think it was some afternoon in October of 1988. Had I to do it all over again, I would have gotten a tad more obnoxious a whole lot sooner. As I like to quantify everything, according to the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, I have an ISTJ (Inspector) personality. Tickle.com determined that I was a Visionary Philosopher. On the less scientific side, the TheSpark.com’s (now defunct) Personality Test says I’m an SICT (Accountant) personality. And to think in eighth grade, a guidance counselor said I personality cut out to be a garbage collector.

In late 1992, I met my match. I married by my wife, Chris, in the Spring of 1994. Shrubbery, real furniture, and stencil borders in the kitchen arrived soon after. I also married into fur: we have a cat named Bam Bam Dino Cooper. We live in Hilliard, a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, where we have settled into suburban domesticity without much angst. In 1998, my wife and I adopted two baby girls, one from Vietnam and one from China. A third was adopted in 2003. Our little ladies keep us on our toes.

During the warmer months of the year, I am a pretty avid cyclist usually doing a handful of metric century mile rides each year. No racing, just touring. Despite the overwhelming crowds and almost certain inclement weather, I started riding the week long camping and biking GOBA tour about fifteen years ago. Too much fun. For several years I was the webmaster for their site.

When not on the ground I have, in the past, spelunked under it and skydived from 12,500 feet above it. Both were fantastic experiences that I can never manage to describe to anyone adequately. I’ve also rappelled off quarry cliffs, parasailed over Cancún and white water rafted on the Upper Gauley a couple of times. I guess I’m drawn to activities where you compete against yourself, but don’t keep score. I’m sure there is some deep psychological reason for that—I’ll let you know when I figure it out myself. I play, but am horrible at, soccer. My life is much less adventurous now that I have a family. Thankfully it isn’t more sedate.

In my moments of quiet sanity, which are luckily more frequent, I play piano (Cue the background music). It’s usually jazz, but depending on my mood (and what mood I want to be in) it could be anything from Gershwin to David Benoit to Billy Joel to Claude Debussy. My musical listening tastes are quite eclectic too. My CD collection is mostly jazz, folk, and a little classical, but I enjoy almost anything. Rap and country excluded. Your mileage may vary. When I used to have free time, I also rang English handbells with the Columbus Symphonic Handbell Choir and volunteered with the Columbus Symphony Orchestra and their annual Picnic with the Pops concert series. A couple of those years I was on their Board of Directors.