Brief History of Time

Why the heck are you so warped?
or, selected highlights from my crazy life...

Last updated: June 2005

I was born October 6, 1977 in New Orleans, Louisiana. My father was finishing medical school at Tulane after graduating from the Air Force Academy, and my mother was working in the welfare office after graduating from Colorado College. I don't remember much about my time in New Orleans, but my parents have lots of funny stories. Anyway, we moved on pretty quick, but not very far.

In Biloxi, Mississippi, my younger brother Gary joined our small but growing family on December 13, 1978. (I think it was a Wednesday, so he wasn't totally cursed with bad luck...) I had started talking by this time, but Gary obviously was still unable to do so. However, I'm told that we developed some form of gibberish talk, which I was capable of translating for the adults.

So then we moved on to Spokane, Washington, where my dad trained as a flight surgeon. (In case you didn't catch it earlier, he was in the Air Force) My most distinct memories of this time come from the way my room was set up (we had a neat wrap-around stairway to the top bunk bed (mine) that I shared with my brother; and also of a fishing trip my dad took us on. Gary and I went upstream with a bunch of pink marshmallows (which my dad was using for bait) and tossed them into the stream. You can imagine my father's surprise and frustration when he first noticed them floating past his perch. The other major event while living here was the addition of the fifth and final member of our family, my little sister Brittany, on September 12, 1980.

So, being the Air Force brats we were, we were quickly bundled off to yet another exotic locale in San Antonio, Texas. Because Texas is a sweltering pit of heat and despair, we spent a great deal of time at the local swimming pool, which is where I took on my first fish-like qualities. My first swimming teacher had a very unique method of training. She would hold you above water, then suddenly dunk your head for a few seconds. If you came up screaming, she dunked you right back down. Obviously, I learned very quickly that the water is your friend.

Three years later, we moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado. My first year here (2nd grade) they decided I was deficient in my math skills. I spent two months in remedial math before they realized I just wasn't good at facts, and they pushed me up to the accelerated math group. I remember a time we were supposed to pick a chemical formula to model and report on. Most people chose water, or carbon dioxide, I chose cellulose (wood). While most molecules were three or four atoms, mine was three feet long and made out of different Construx pieces. After 3rd grade, the Air Force decided that my dad's next post was in the Phillipines, and my mom decided that if he went, he was going alone.

So we made our final move out of the active duty Air Force, and to my now considered "hometown" of Casper, Wyoming. During 4th grade, I met my future and current best friend, Todd Mulholland. In 6th grade, I joined the math team, which eventually earned me a few little scholarships, a trip to DC, and a fairly well deserved reputation as a mega-nerd. A brief foray into Dungeons and Dragons quickly turned into an obsession that continues today, and it certainly didn't help me beat the nerd rap.

At one point during 7th grade, being a terrified little new kid in a big new school (Centennial Junior High), I heard the Latin teacher reaming out a student before school. He had such a deep booming voice and stern tone, that I was absolutely terrified of him. When registration for 8th grade came up, my mom told me to take Latin, but I didn't want to because I remembered how mean the teacher was. In the end, she won and I lost, to my eventual betterment. Mr. Callahan was the type of teacher that stays with you forever, in so many ways. Not only was he a brilliant teacher who brought the very best out in all his students, but he was the type of person who can always make you feel special. Being the mega-nerd I was, I was usually at school long before classes started, and I began spending that time in the Latin room. Before long, Mr. Callahan started putting me to work as an aide, stapling and collating various handouts and assignments, grading some minor quizzes, and eventually moving up to the copy machine. I started coming earlier and earlier, to guarantee that I spent the most time with him, and gave him the most help I possibly could. As time went on, we started talking more and more, and we became very close friends, as well as working partners and student and teacher. More than any other person, before or since, Mr Callahan awakened the latent potential within me. Even after I left junior high and traveled on to high school and college, Mr. Callahan remained a guiding compass and a true friend. When he passed away in November of 98 from leukemia, it was almost like losing a father. But he will remain with me, now and always; as friend and confidant; and he will always be there with me, for I am the better for having known him...

It was also in Junior High that I met my first girlfriend, and it was mainly through the mentorship of Mr. Callahan that we got together. Mr. C. ran regular trips to Denver (the city nearest Casper of any decent size), and I was a regular attendee, thanks to a seldom won "free-trip" for getting a perfect score on a national Latin exam. It was on one of these trips that Rebecca, a friend from several of my other classes, accompanied me on a walk through the Hall of Minerals in the Denver Natural History Museum. Unexperienced with that particular variety of emotions, I made a relatively obscure and off-handed approach at asking Rebecca on a date. Amazingly, she said yes, which started an incredible 6.5 year relationship.

High School saw the addition of yet another wonderful teacher who became a fast friend. Oddly enough, he also intimidated me at first. I remember walking into the Kelly Walsh Swimming pool as a lowly 9th grader, a pilgrim on unholy grounds, watching all of the big, scary, high school kids walking around me. When I told the swimming coach, Dean Hawks, that I wanted to join the swim team, he looked fairly skeptical, but four years and thousands of hours together apparently changed his mind. I first qualified for the state meet my sophomore year in the 100 backstroke, and added the 100 butterfly and the 200 IM junior and senior year. I was one of the many co-Captains my senior year, but my talent/drive to succeed in swimming wasn't quite high enough for me to place any higher than 5th at state. Still, that pool was a second home to me, and almost more a home than my parents house. I still make visits back to visit Dean and see the latest crop of promising young swimmers.

In 1996, I graduated from high school as the Valedictorian of my graduating class. I had been accepted to the California Institute of Technology, the US Air Force Academy, and I had also been selected for a Type I Air Force ROTC scholarship to Caltech. I enrolled at Caltech that fall, and was selected into Fleming Hovse, after a very interesting and somewhat surprising rotation. (I didn't get my first choice, but I did get into the Hovse I belonged in.) During Formal Meal, my ROTC instincts took over, and my loud voice earned me the title of Frosh Work Chair. Sophomore year saw me selected for the post of UCC2, where I learned a lot and had a lot of fun. My perfomance got me selected for UCC5 the following (my junior) year, and I had a great time with that too.

Over the summer prior to my junior year, I went to ROTC Field Training, basically boot camp. During the first few days, I severely injured my right knee, though no doctor can seem to tell me what's wrong with it, short of the fact that I just have bad genes. Over the course of junior year, I tried to rehabilitate my knee while simultaneously maintaining a level of physical preparation for my ROTC requirements. Whether because of the severity of the injury, or my own mistakes in not giving it time to heal, my knee is still pretty screwed up, and looks like it's going to stay that way. Because I was no longer capable of completing the ROTC physical requirements, my scholarship was terminated.

At the same time, I was suffering through my junior year physics classes. (In case I haven't told you already, DON'T be a physics major at Caltech...) I had had doubts about physics since my freshman year, but my ROTC scholarship stipulated that I had to finish college with a physics degree. My grades got progressively worse, as I became more bewildered with each new class. The one good thing about the loss of my scholarship, it meant that I no longer had to stay in physics, so I immediately jumped ship to join the wealthy ranks of Computer Science majors, even though it doomed me to yet another year at Tech.

It was also at this time that my relationship with Rebecca foundered and eventually died. After getting engaged the previous Christmas (1998), Rebecca and I went through some hard times during the early part of the year, mostly in relation to my ROTC difficulties, plus a lot of long distance stress (she was in Greeley, CO, I was in Pasadena, CA). She told me one day in April that she wanted to try dating other people, so we broke up. I took it pretty hard, which didn't help dealing with all the other weird stuff going on in my life. I finished out the year at Tech and spent the summer in Denver working. This gave me a chance to see Rebecca on a semi-regular basis, and we sort of mended our bridges. By the end of the summer, she wanted to get engaged again, but I told her I didn't think I was quite ready, and that we should wait until the following year. Two weeks later, she called me to say that she had found a new boyfriend, and my services were no longer required. We tried to maintain the friendship over the next month or two, but the rancor was pretty thick, and we lost contact. She has since gotten engaged (and probably married) to the guy she met, and I wish her the best.

I spent the next year and a half (my senior and super-senior years) at Tech working toward a Computer Science degree. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of overlap between Physics and CS, so I was basically back to my sophomore year, but without any of the pesky basic core classes to take. The first year went pretty well, but in the middle of the second year, I had an extremely hard time concentrating, and life started to get really unpleasant. It felt mainly like a serious bout of depression, which somewhat harkened back to my junior year, two years prior. I ended up dropping out of school, and with some significant help from some wonderful friends (notably Miss Diana King) I managed to put myself back together for a while.

So I spent the summer and the early fall working like a fiend to redeem my flagging spirits. I ended up running not only one regular job being the database administrator and go-to-guy for the finance dept at the City of Casper, but another job doing basic computer repair and education, and being the assistant coach for the high school swim team. For a while things were going fine, and I felt really great, and then one day the bottom fell out.

I quit all of my jobs with basically no notice, and spent the next few months living off my savings, trying to figure out what purpose I had in life. Coming up with fewer and fewer answers, my thoughts started turning to self-mutilation and to the inevitable conclusion. It was not a happy period. Near the beginning of February, I placed a call to Di, wanting mainly to apologize for being a worthless human being and for whatever might happen in the near future. Thankfully, she moved heaven and earth, alerted my parents, and managed to get me hauled off for some real help.

Turns out that I've been bipolar (or manic depressive) probably for my entire life. Looking back, I was probably in a manic state for much (if not all) of my first 20-odd years. Any depressive cycles were short and mild, and I got used to having the extreme levels of energy and motivation that the manic states brought. About the time of my Junior year troubles (Mr C's death, ROTC troubles, and the breakup with Rebecca), I hit my first serious depressive cycle, and the following years just broke up my personality even more.

So knowing that I have a real medical condition, they put me on medication, and I spent a couple months stabilizing. I've been working to slowly ease back into a more regular life, and trying hard not to let my manic phases get out of hand, or let my depressive phases take over my life.

I got a job doing tech support for trib.com, a local dialup internet service provider, and worked there for just over two years. I finally felt confident enough to break out of Casper, and started applying for new jobs. I managed to land a job doing desktop support and programming for Schlumberger in Denver, and I've settled into a new apartment. I've made a few local friends, and I'm trying to get back into some of my other hobbies, namely web design, creative writing, and rpg design.