Autobiography
I was born in
Cincinnati Ohio. I lived in
Sunnyvale,
California for almost 30 years.
I went to Homestead High School with the founders of
Apple (Jobs and Wozniak), so I saw
Silicon Valley go from orchards to fabs. In
high school I took a lot of pictures with my Canon EF outfit. I was also the president of
the Pizza of the Month Club with Wolfgang Hanisch, a great photography teacher of mine.
After high school I went on a mission for the
LDS Church
for two years in South Carolina. I served as a missionary trainer, a district leader, a zone
leader, and as secretary to the president. I served with President Robert H. Parker, a great man
that I learned many things from.
I then attended
BYU where I majored
in
Math and
Physics and minored in
Philosophy. I was the president of the
Association of Computer Programmers where we learned how to program the Macintosh.
The best class I took was a class in learning to read classical Greek by reading
the New Testament! I was very fortunate to take many classes from Hugh Nibley,
Truman Madsen, and C. Wilfred Griggs. These men taught me history, philosophy, and ancient studies,
respectively.
During the early 1980s I came home to California often for holidays and summers. There I was involved
in many different activities. I was a part of the PPC, an HP calculator users group that learned how to
do "synthetic programming" on the HP-41C, and later, how to do Forth programming on HP-75s and HP-71Bs.
In the summer of 1982 my sister got married. This was hard for me, as she was a great friend that now
began to lead a different life. So I climbed Mt. Shasta (14,162 feet above sea level) with friends,
and rebuilt the engine of my first car, a 1961 VW Beetle that my father gave me.
In the summer of 1983 I listened to
KFJC's Maximum Louie Louie Festival
on the radio for several days.
In 1983 and 1984 I sang in the Utah Bach Choir. In 1985 on Bach's 300th birthday I participated
in a sing-along in San Francisco where hundreds of people sang Bach's B Minor Mass. That same summer
my mother and I went to sing-alongs every Monday evening in Menlo Park. We sang things like Handel's
Messiah and Carl Orf's Carmina Burina. In 1986 I was part of a South Bay production of
The Music Man, where I was part of the barbershop quartet. I sang baritone.
I worked at
Apple Computer
from 1985 until 1994, although I lived in
Utah from 1991 on.
While at Apple I worked on a wide variety of projects. I began by testing MacApp (the
first commercial class libraries), and then I did a lot of development on MacsBug, Apple's
main assembly-level debugger. I also worked with Steve Capps at this time on testing HFS and
new Finders. Then on to working on the MPW Shell's editor half, adding features for HyperCard 2.0,
and then creating common front and back end compiler pieces on the Lego project. After a detour
to Utah to work for MicroMath on scientific software, I returned to Apple to lead system software
API testing for the Power Macintoshes and System 7.5. Whew. No wonder I took a sabbatical
while at Apple!
While at Apple I wrote a book: On Macintosh Programming: Advanced Techniques. It was published
by Addison-Wesley and has also been translated into Japanese. It has been used as a text at several
universities. I did not make much money from the book, but it did help establish me as an authority on
the Macintosh, and this helped me gain visibility, which led to Microsoft hiring me.
Apple in 1985 was a great place to work, kind of like
Microsoft was when I arrived in 1994. At Microsoft I
worked on WLM, Visual C++, Omni, Java for IE 4, and Java for Windows CE. I then managed all
of the testing of tools, libraries, and virtual machines for Windows CE, which includes VC, VJ,
VB, the ETK, SDKs, CEF, and more! I retired from Microsoft October 15th, 1999.
Family
The smartest thing I ever did was marry Elizabeth Anne Tobin, of
Salem, Massachusets. That was in 1987. In our early
years we lived in Cupertino and Fairfield California. Then we lived in Sandy Utah from 1991 until 1994.
We had four great kids in less than 5 years!
From oldest to youngest they are Andrew, Rachel, Joshua, and Brigham.
Here we are in the canyon not far from our house:
The Pacific Northwest Years: 1994-2004
In 1994 I left Apple Computer and went to work for Microsoft. We moved up to Issaquah in an
apartment for nine months, and then in July of 1995 finally moved into a new home in North
Bend, Washington.
Here is Puget sound from the air, with the
North Bend,
Washington
area where we lived marked by a yellow box:
If you zoom in on the yellow boxed area of North Bend, you can see I-90 and Mount Si.
X marks the spot where we lived while I worked at Microsoft.
[30th anniversary note: love these circa 1995 aerial photos!]
According to my GPS receivers our house was at N 47° 28.915', W 121° 47.850', and was
530 feet above sea level. The climate there receives a lot more rain than does Seattle.
North Bend averages at least 70 inches per year, and sometimes can have as much as 120 inches!
Here was our house in the snow of late December 1996:
The Ranch Years: 2004-2014
In 2004 we moved to Spring Lake, UT.
We did so to get some land for horses, ATVs, etc.
We raised alfalfa on and off, and enjoyed the peace and quiet of the rural life.
Our kids grew up and went to Payson high school, and then served missions for our church and went
to BYU from here. We had a great time learning about farming/ranching, raising horses and rabbits,
and ended up renting four acres of our land to a man that planted 26,000 tomato plants, chili's,
corn, and other fresh vegetables, all of which we got to enjoy.
Munich
In 2012 we lived in Munich Germany for
five months. What an incrediable time we had! It was life-changing.
[30th anniversary note: add photos and pages about Munich.]
Jan 2017 Update
While in Utah our children grew up, served missions, and went to college. In 2014 we sold our place and began our freedom tour. We have lived in Hyannis MA, Kirkland WA, West Yarmouth MA, and
along the way in many Hampton Inns all over the country. Who knows where life will take us next!
June 2019 Update
Well we lived on Cape Cod for nine months at 64 Whidden Hyannis, and then we lived in Kirkland WA for a year, and then we lived on
Cape Cod again at 37 Pawnee in West Yarmouth, and then we travelled the country considering many different places from NC to Waco to Idaho,
and after visiting many of these we ended up buying a house in Idaho Falls in 2017 and finally we got all of our possessions
back under one roof again.
Idaho Falls has been quiet and relatively cool for the West. We like cool. This Spring of 2019 has been especially wet and rainy. We like wet & rainy.
Traffic and crime are low, our home is well made, we have most basic needs nearby, and we can be to West Yellowstone or Jackson Hole in two hours.
A Costco will be here next year. We do miss the ocean, boats, and seafood though...
August 22nd, 2025 Update
This website turns 30 years old today!
I doubt I will live another 30 years, as I am now 66 years old.
It has been a terrific life thus far. My wife and I have been married for 38 years, we have 4
wonderful children, and 5 going on 6 grandchildren. We have traveled the US & Europe extensively.
I am grateful that we will be together after this life, having been married and sealed
in the Oakland Temple.
Hobbies
I like to travel, and in order to travel one must have a collection of
gadgets.
I enjoy collecting sextants, instruments used to navigate by the heavens. I
have written a lot of navigation software over the years.
Apple, Canon, HP, Mercedes, Nikon are some of my favorite companies.
J.S. Bach, Camel, Cheryl Crow, Pink Floyd, Alan Parsons, and Jean Luc Ponty are some of my favorite musicians.
I enjoy photography and digital cameras.
Programming computers and creating, testing, and benchmarking development tools is a real passion of mine.
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Created: 7 May 1998
Modified: 22 Aug 2025