I was born on June 29th, 1973, in a funny little place called Sacramento, California to Joseph and Shelia Kilpatrick. I'm sure they wish they could change that, but facts are facts.

Sacramento was a pretty normal place to grow up, if you had a normal life. However, I went to Catholic School. With nuns. From Ireland. Who swung rulers around like they thought they're the Highlander or something. Fortunately, the aforementioned genetic donors had given me a hard head, so things weren't scrambled too much. I went through the normal Catholic School experience - uniforms, Catholic theology, mass on Friday, the whole nine yards.

However, if you think that such joy and bliss were to end with high school, dream on. The next step in the indoctrination was 4 years at Jesuit High School - all Catholic, all boys, all weird. Yes, it could have been worse. I could have had to go to Public School and get my ass kicked on a daily basis. And as far as Catholic educators go, the Jesuits are pretty damn cool. Some how they get this crazy notion that personal integrity is more important than dogmatic obedience. Go figure.

But even those trials passed, and I found myself attending the University of California at Davis. Kind of a Berkeley-lite. Not quite as weird, not quite as far, and not quite as dangerous. There I studied computer science, played and sang music, became obsessed with Japanese animation, and rode my bike a lot.

Public opinion of Davis is kind of funny, as are my reasons for going there. Most people in California have heard of it because of the agricultural program, the vet school, or its involvement with the wine industry. And these programs could be considered the "stars" of the campus. But the Engineering program isn't too shabby, and I found that the Computer Science program pretty much did what I needed it to do.

For someone that's a Northern California native, UCD may seem like a strange place to go, especially for one with an interest in computer science. However, I did make some conscious decisions.

I did not want to go to another private school. I have nothing wrong with private colleges - Stanford is great for CS as is MIT. (Anything east coast was always out of the question...not only does the climate not suit me, but I really think there's something about being in the Silicon Valley, at least for CS. While MIT probably has a better total engineering program, the things that I tend to like seem to do better out here. Remember, Sun is an acronym. :-) Also, I didn't feel like hitting my parents up for the cash necessary. And besides, I had been going wit the private school crowd all my life...I wanted a bit more diversity.

That leaves the public schools. Like so many, I would have to place Berkeley at the top of the list. It has perhaps the best CS program in the country, for those that care about that sort of thing. For me, it's the true unix homeland. (I am definitely in the FreeBSD camp.) And the counter-culture aspect is quite attractive. I truly don't think that there is any school more liberal. My friend from MIT tried to debate this, but I pointed out that depending on geeks to drive social change is dangerous...where as in Cal, they are swept along by others.

However, Berkeley did have problems for me. I wasn't exactly ready for a move to something quite that big, as Berkeley is just one tiny part of the huge thing called the Bay Area. And the town was just a bit too funky for a Catholic schoolboy.

So I looked at Davis. Yes, it's not the prettiest of the UC campuses (have you seen Irvine?), but it certainly is flat. It was close enough for me to Sacramento that I could visit when I wished, but far enough away that the parents wouldn't just pop on over for a visit. It's a nice safe quiet town, but quite progressive. The school's CS program is quite good, but had other things to keep me interested (like the Cal Aggie Marching Band-uh, and other such fun groups). It's still in Northern California, which means that it is a reasonable distance from Silicon Valley, so visiting companies wasn't a problem.

In my case, the college experience was more perhaps about "growing up" than getting an education. Not to say that I didn't learn stuff, but I'll be honest - a lot of the theoretical stuff (algorithm analysis, automata theory, and other fun stuff) was pretty boring. However I found subjects like computer graphics and networks quite interesting. And it was also there that I worked in an on-campus job that eventually became a career - systems administration. I worked as a "student programmer" for the CS Department and my job (along with the others in my group) was to administrate the student labs. This turned out to be something that I enjoyed doing, and I decided to make a career out of it, since i displayed some aptitude for it, and since UNIX administrators are in fairly high demand.

So I actually managed to graduate (to the surprise of all who know me) and even had a job lined up. Therefore in early April 1997 I moved to Mountain View and started working for a contracting agency here in the Silicon Valley. However, their presentation and the reality of working there were *quite* different. Thus I moved on and was able to get a job at a company I really wanted to work for in the first place, Silicon Graphics. While at SGI my professional interest moved from systems administration to networking. However, all good things must come to an end and so did my time at SGI. Then I moved to moved to Inktomi which was a huge move forward in my career. But then the bubble burst, and so did my job.

I took some time off before stating working again - which was a good idea since my mother became ill. But once we were past that and I started to recall this thing you call "money" that I had used to have I was reconciled to the reality of working again. I started with a brief contract at Wind River Systems where I got a chance to see one of the best IT cultures I have ever witnessed. That led in to another position in Alameda with UTStarcom, which had another great time. That position had it's ups and downs but all in all it was a great experience. But it was time for a change, so I went to VeriSign. While VeriSign was an incredible growth experience it turns out that I am not well suited for a strictly Operations role. Architecture and Engineering are what I love most. I have found an opportunity to do that at a stealth mode startup that shall remain nameless.

I am also currently working on gaining my CCIE certification. The home lab is almost complete (boy that is a lot of gear! Too much power for a 2 bedroom apartment!) and I am studying as often as possible. I even listen to audio books about networking while taking the train to work. One thing I particularly like about the CCIE certification is that the focus on the lab exam makes studying much more of a hands on experience. Playing with routers is more fun than reading a book any day.

So here I am, almost 10 years into my professional career. I must say that if you had asked me in March of 1997 what I thought I'd be doing by now I would have been completely wrong. Best laid plans, I suppose. I will certainly be interested in seeing what happens next.