Autobiographical Summary:

Pre-School

I was born in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1976 (the Bicentennial year of the United States).

My parents were Christian. Dad was a radio disc-jockey, waterbed salesman, and Radio Shack clerk. Mom had my sister in 1978, and my brother in 1980.

We moved to Bakersfield, California when I was maybe five. I'm pretty sure both of my parents grew up in California so I'm not clear on why they moved to the East Coast but I'm glad they came back (no offense to Pennsylvania or anything).

Dad was weird. He sometimes believed he was G-d and had created all things. He demanded obedience and order. He focused more attention on me, his firstborn son, than my younger siblings. He had a plan for me to become the Christ and Savior of the world when I grew up. It didn't make much sense to my childhood mind but I liked his focus on me. It was certainly an interesting role to be cultivated for.

Dad got crazier and violent. Mom divorced him and became a lesbian.

Mom had several serious relationships with women. We had two loving moms most of the time, which made having a completely absent father more bearable.

My moms, siblings, and I lived in Culver City (Los Angeles County) for several years and Dad had visitation rights for a while until he defended himself in a custody battle and lost. He had been diagnosed as a paranoid delusional schizophrenic. The court required him to take medication before he would be allowed to see us again. He refused and we didn't hear from him for about a decade.

Elementary and Middle School

I was a smart and troubled kid through school. I skipped some grades, corrected teachers a lot, and wore sweatpants most days (since they were so much more comfortable than jeans or other pants).

I grew a love for cats and skateboarding in elementary school. I also won La Ballona's Presidential election with the slogan "Philly Creamcheese for President!" and my sister won the Vice Presidency. The teachers said I should stop wearing sweats to school and behave better in class. They said I had new responsibility to be a role-model for the whole school. I told them to forget it. I'd rather be comfortable and correct false instruction than to put on some fake obedient show. Student-government was lame and I hardly showed up or paid attention when there. We had no authority so it was just an excuse to study how real governments worked (a lot of talk and little action).

I was super-stoked to get a dual-cassette deck one year for my birthday. I remember waiting patiently by the radio to tape-record my favorite song, the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Fight Like a Brave, off KROQ or KDAY. That song is just as awesome today.

I got into girls, math, and freestyle BMX at Culver City Middle School. Several of my friends had Nintendo Entertainment System but my mom refused to buy us one. I spent a lot of time sleeping over at friends' houses to play Nintendo.

I got way into Oingo Boingo and the Beastie Boys. In fact, a 15 year old girl introduced me to the B-Boys and taught me how to kiss when I was 10. She said I was smarter than her classmates. It was forbidden love. ;)

My moms bought a house together in North Hollywood so we moved to the San Fernando Valley before I entered 8th grade. I went to Math/Science Magnet schools, Griffith and Madison.

I struggled to deal with the frustrations and perplexities of my life. I found troubled solace playing with fire, burning all sorts of things in creative ways.

I was Ponyboy in The Outsiders play that we put on at Madison which was the last time I was serious about acting. I was an accomplished juggler and had exquisite balance from my experience riding unicycles.

In junior high, I enjoyed making out, trying to get girls' clothes off, and having oral sex. I engaged in risque sexual activity during class in my proud, immature, and lewd defiance.

I played little league for a season and listened to Guns 'n Roses, Motley Crue, Skid Row, and Poison on Pirate Radio and 2 Live Crew, Sir Mix-a-lot, Bel Biv Devoe, and Tone Loc on Power 106. I think I developed such trendy music tastes for a while primarily to enhance my appeal with the girlies. ;)

I pulled fire-alarms almost any time I passed one. I pissed all over books in the school library and rearranged the card catalogs. I carried Swiss Army knives to school because they were useful tools and I didn't respect the rules. I got suspended often. I was expelled when I lit the principal's desk on fire. The school district required me to see a psychiatrist to be allowed to attend another school, Millikan, where I was reunited with one of my close friends from earlier childhood and I got into trouble with a bunch of girls and suspended once there too. These disobedient expressions were all significant components of my struggle for attention, understanding of my unique place in the world, my seeming powerlessness and frailty, my disenfranchisement with daily routine, and vitriolic loathing of ill-gotten or illogical authority.

High School

I attended Van Nuys High School (another Math/Science Magnet) and mellowed out some.

I had some steady girlfriends and lost my virginity to an older girl when I was 15.

I learned computer programming and how to solve Rubik's Cubes with a close friend. We played video games, listened to lots of Pixies and Ween music, and burnt magnesium ribbon outside They Might Be Giants concerts.

I enjoyed Pre-Calculus (being the first class to have school-provided TI-81 graphing calculators), Metal Shop class, playing tennis, and learning to drive. By my senior year, I had my own HP48GX calculator and I spent more time programming games and utilities on that than paying attention in class.

I worked at Blockbuster Video, Subway, and In-N-Out Burger.

My girlfriend (who also worked at In-N-Out) introduced me to sushi and I have loved it since.

I hung out with the math and music nerds and the goths. We were proud to be strange and different. We went to our Homecoming dance in our pajamas and a friend and I cut in on our Prom King and Queen's solo dance (much to the chagrin of just about everyone in the enormous ballroom). We were anti-trendy non-conformists. We could regularly be found conforming to the opposite of stereotypical conformity though. Damned if you do. ;)

Music: They Might Be Giants, Oingo Boingo, Ween, No Doubt, The Pixies, The Smiths, Nirvana, The Cure, Sugarcubes, Devo, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Primus, Vanilla Ice (because he was so damn cool!), Squeeze, The Cranberries, Spin Doctors, Lemonheads, Depeche Mode, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Dead Kennedys, Green Day, The Vandals, and Offspring. I mention music so much because I think imagining the sounds and words along with different periods in my life will help them to resonate with yours and theme music paints a better picture.

With my own steady income from In-N-Out, I was finally able to buy myself a Sega Genesis and a Super Nintendo. A close friend had a TurboGraFX 16 which I was a bit envious of but what I really coveted was Neo-Geo (real arcade hardware in your home!). Alas, it was way too expensive.

College

I was accepted to UCI (University of California at Irvine) and entered their ICS (Information and Computer Science) department. I plunged into experimentation with every drug I could find. I made several friends in the Campus-wide Honors Program and we played a lot of Doom and WarCraft II and taught ourselves x86 Assembly Language (often instead of attending boring classes).

I made strong friendships with In-N-Out associates I met while working at the store across from campus. We got high all the time and played a lot of Virtua Fighter and FIFA. After a few years of near constant high (and not being able to handle getting punched in the face by a roommate), I burned out on drugs and plunged into Christianity. I drove all over L.A. every Sunday morning looking for a new church each week. Most of them had wondefully nice and genuine believers who encouraged me to get grounded, plugged in, and accountable to a particular fellowship (namely theirs) but I politely declined. I could hardly stand to repeat visits because I craved a broad perspective which couldn't be gotten by sitting still and being told whatever they thought I should know each week. I had an insatiable appetite for different perspectives on "ultimate truth." I asked a lot of questions and found few appeasing answers. I pointed out a lot of hypocricy and was met with a great deal of resistance (some places asked me not to come back but I didn't intend to anyway). I didn't shout in the middle of services or anything. I was respectful of their worship customs. I just spoke my mind afterwards and asked challenging questions and a lot of people took grievous offense to that.

My brother entered UCSB (Santa Barbara) and my sister (mom's wife's older daughter) died tragically in a car crash at 29 years old. One of my other sisters was suffering difficult times too. My moms sold the house and bought a new one in Wisconsin. My mom had accepted a new job there and was tired of L.A. traffic and her wife was distressed and disillusioned over the loss of her daugher. My sister struggled with drugs and thinking she might need or want to be insane. She and I had taken a lot of drugs together (as I had been dating one of her close friends) but she was far more self-destructive than me. She eventually cleaned up and moved to Wisconsin too to be close to our moms for her rehabilitation and has remained there since.

While still attending UCI, I got my first job in the video game industry play-testing StarCraft at Blizzard. I worked several weeks of over a hundred hours and made a ton of money. I went snowboarding almost every week. Our office was above a Messianic congregation of Christians which met on Saturday. This was intriguing so I took a break from work one Saturday to investigate and was blown away. People were singing in Hebrew and dancing joyously in large circles. The single sermon that day addressed a significant number of the conflicts I had been having with Sunday churches. I cried in relief. I started attending Adat HaMashiach services every Sabbath for about a year. This still left my Sundays free (when not working) to visit new churches but that felt less worthwhile as time progressed.

I learned the Hebrew Alephbeyt, the songs, and dances. I studied hard and found new difficult questions to ask but there was a more genuine attempt to honestly research and answer issues. I studied Torah and began wearing a kippot (a.k.a. yarmulka) and a talit-katan with tzit-tzit and techelet (a white and blue fringed garment worn to remember the commandments). I practiced the holy-days and studied their meaning. I got involved in Hillel at UCI and pledged Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi, the national Jewish fraternity). I became increasingly frum (keeping the Sabbath holy and eating Kosher foods). I grew to resent the Christian trappings of Messianic Judaism (particularly passing around collection plates and selling books on the Sabbath when no money should be spent and everyone should stop working and causing others to work on the day of rest). I had a very close Seventh Day Adventist friend. She and I grew into Nazarene Judaism and then I somewhat sadly outgrew her into Orthodoxy.

My moms divorced. My biological mom stayed in Wisconsin and her ex-wife moved back down to San Diego. I have stayed in touch with her and continue to love her dearly. I was active in fraternity (and made a huge number of great friends there), went snowboarding whenever I could, and partied a lot. I imported a Nipponese Sega DreamCast exclusively to play Soul Calibur (which remains my favorite video game). My mom re-married (to a wondefully loving ex-nun she had met). My little brother developed Hodgkin's Lymphoma in his neck and flew to Wisconsin for treatment near our moms and sister.

I worked for several dot-com start-ups and made a lot of money for a while. I learned the Unix Philosophy and the Perl language (which remains the closest programming language to the way I think). I joined the Libertarian Party. My friend introduced me to Snow Crash (which remains my favorite book). I decided to pursue professional video game programming after dot-com crap got too annoying. I got a job working on Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer in Costa Mesa but the company closed shortly afterwards. The next job I found was in Novato (Northern California) to go work on Celebrity Deathmatch so I dropped out of college to take the job up north. I still would require about another year of full-time coursework to graduate. I was a student at UCI for about 5 years, the second half of which I was just a part-time student while I worked full-time jobs.

Post-School

I worked on Celebrity Deathmatch (CDM) and met an awesome game designer and fighting game competitor there. He introduced me to SRK's staff and I helped run, and competed in, my first big tournament, Evolution, in 2002. I found that I'm average (or slightly below) among the top international fighting game competitors but I definitely appreciate being a member of the interesting and diverse community. I had helped organize, and competed in, each annual Evo tournament between then and 2005.

I had a falling out with the owner of Big Ape who was making CDM and he fired me. I returned to In-N-Out and made another great friend there (who has been my roommate since).

I bought my first motorcycle, a little 250cc Suzuki cruiser, and taught myself how to ride by simply diving into traffic "sink-or-swim" style planning to learn by experimentation on the 15-mile ride home. I knew how to drive a manual transmission car and had good balance so I figured everything out pretty rapidly and only stalled twice. I practiced a lot that summer and realized just how much fun I had been missing my whole life without bikes.

I tried to start a new kind of competitive arcade business with some friends but it never got off the ground.

I had great difficulty finding work. I moved and moved again. I suffered a severe depression and tried to kill myself on speed. I thought I had never done anything good and could never amount to anything worthwhile. I thought the only good thing I could do was to leave this world to people better (i.e., more desirable, valuable, successful, etc.) than me. At the bottom of coming down from eight sleepless nights on tweak, I realized that the whole thing was logically inconsistent. If I was so perfectly bad that I had never done anything good, then I shouldn't be able to start doing good by killing myself. My willingness to leave, if I thought I was that bad, proved that I had at least a shred of worthwhile good in me to offer the world, so I should stick around. =) The police also picked me up running around naked in the rain, drinking runoff and proclaiming "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Chanukkah" to everyone. An important part of my downward spiral was the fear that insanity was hereditary, that I had always been crazy or was doomed to become, and that I could never know it either way. I had always been so melodramatic, absolutist, and a perfectionist in some ways. The binary world of everything needing to be exactly (and only) black or white finally gave way to shades of gray and vibrant color in my mind. It was an epiphany and I snapped out of the depression, got closer to my family and friends, sought therapy with an awesome narrative therapist in El Cerrito, and generally rebounded back to normal.

I landed a job at Digital Eclipse (now Backbone, an F9E company) and worked on Mucha Lucha and Death, Jr. with my friend from Big Ape again.

I bought my first sport bike, a black 2005 Yamaha YZF-R6, which I named Nitemare. I tore up the roads on that thing (and still do since it has been repaired).

I got a little more involved in Marin's small Libertarian Party county meetings but was bothered by all the political protocol, jargon, by-laws, etc.. I served as Secretary when I had time to but wanted libertarian conversation much more than to play political marketing games.

Backbone habitually underpaid their employees (along with many other offenses I was outspoken against) so I left after we shipped Death, Jr. for PSP (PlayStation Portable) and went to work for Z-Axis (which used to be a large Activision studio) in Foster City on X-Men 3.

Right after starting at Z-Axis, I fell in love. I also took two weeks off to go to Evo in Vegas and race Nitemare at Thunder Hill a second time. My forks were improperly tuned and they bottomed-out under hard braking on the front straight-away. This destabilized my steering and I left the track in excess of 100 miles-per-hour. I cruised probably about 100 yards into the field before hitting a post, overturning, and getting knocked out. Nitemare was broken and I wasn't. I just had bruises and a concussion.

During my recuperation, I would sleep under my desk at Z-Axis when I was too tired to work. I made lots of friends there and felt I wrote a lot of useful code for them.

Once I was well enough to ride again, Nitemare's state of disrepair was unbearable... so I bought a new red 2005 R6, which I named Demon.

Z-Axis fired me without any warning and without even a single prior mention of inadequate performance. The justification they gave was that I had been "sleeping on the job" even though I had permission from my direct boss to do so.

I sold Demon to my potential running-mate and looked for work. I landed a job at Sony R&D (Research and Development) in Foster City working on PS3 (PlayStation 3).

My girlfriend and I had a lot of problems. It was very volatile for a while as we progressed through several rapid and intense episodes. I got melodramatic and critical about it (What else is new?). I'm good at having unrealistic expectations for myself and others. ;) We each hurt the other a lot. I don't know what it all means. We've fallen apart and back together under changing circumstances. I can't help but love her though. She's awesome even if she's not with me. I have felt that she's been so good at understanding me sometimes. I think I must do a worse job of understanding her. I keep trying but I remain naive. Maybe I'm just not interesting (I mean, maybe I am far more dull than I feel... but is it really a dull worthless cliche stunt to care about justice and mercy as I do in wishing it would all improve at once from bottom to top?). I've tried to soften her with the philosophy of only defensive violence, not initiating physical force, Aikido. Maybe such an approach would put her in greater danger when fighting someone much stronger. I wanted to love her while trying to minimize harm (accepting that some must be, but hopefully that can be limited to emotional harm, which I think is far more voluntary than physical). Maybe she and I will be greater together someday... or any day could be our last. I would like it if we mutually strengthened each other. Then again, maybe we each are only capable of weakening the other, which has a realistically morbid appeal of its own too. The risk versus reward. Vulnerability. Imbalance. I would not press charges or testify against her even if she were to attack me viciously and unprovoked. I would just try to defend myself and neutralize her threat and argue against that mode. I am grieved that my principles have been so rigid in the past that I wasn't able to cut her more deserved slack. My principles aren't supposed to be hers. She's gotta choose her own. I'd rather she did and I'm glad I've been influential but just because I'd like to mesh with her better doesn't mean I'm justified in thinking I know the right way for her. I'd much rather see her often than never but she prefers to spend the vast majority of her time away from me. Maybe she thinks she's dragging me into her disaster area which she wants to shield me from. I don't see it that way. I want her to feel good, appreciated, and loved. It's a constant hurt that has good properties and strange potential I admire. We'll see.

At Sony, I worked hard and did a good job for a few months, but a short-sighted manager there didn't like me and saw to it that my contract was terminated right after the GDC (Game Developers' Conference) back in March.

I attended GDC with a lot of social issues on my mind. I participated in roundtable discussions relating to quality-of-life issues within the industry, developers receiving proper credit for their work, (TBLG) transgender, bisexual, lesbian, and gay issues within companies, teams, and game titles. I talked about emerging diversity of social norms in virtual worlds, sexual content within games, legal issues of player-created content, copyrights, economies and exchange rates, and future planning for where the space should go. I heard talks about competitive design and relationships between disciplines on the same team and between teams and publishers. I observed the growing unrest and uncertainty about the "Next Generation" and the exodus from business-as-usual within the industry. Developers are tired of sequels and licenses. They're tired of huge teams with poor management, inadequate time and money budgets, etc.. Developers are increasingly excited about breaking free from rigid publisher control. XBox Live Arcade, Sony's Network Platform, and Nintendo's Revolution downloadable services may enable small fun profitable titles to be made by small teams again. U.S. developers are longing to work on a Katamari or Colossus-type game and the innovative controls of Nintendo's DS and Wii are distinguishing themselves as more benefit than detriment.

I've seen Loose Change, read about Spiral Dynamics, watched V for Vendetta, and read A for Anarchy. I've also been studying virtual worlds and claimed citizenship within Second Life. Each of these has had a profound impact on my outlook on life. I'm observing a lot of political and social rumblings in California, the United States, and the world.

I've meditated on the state of everything and the direction things should go and what I could possibly do to move things along. I decided to run for President of the United States and am now following through with that plan.

Music for this period: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine, Bad Religion, Marylin Manson, Smashing Pumpkins, Massive Attack, Leftfield, Chemical Bros., Daft Punk, Paul Van Dyk, Sasha, and The Booty Boys.

Relevance

I believe all of my experiences give me a solid basis to understand the general human condition. I have great capacity for compassion. I understand hope and despair. I have loved many times and been heartbroken. I have lived through destitute financial conditions and lavish extravagance. Most of all, I have seen myself, and everything around me, change. I expect, welcome, and celebrate evolution and revolution. I enjoy complexity. There are wonderful puzzles all around which we can solve if we put our minds together. Please elect me to guide us to the next stage of consciousness.