Officially, I was a sociology major with a physics minor. I was apparently pretty good at the sociology thing: I won an award and was a draft reader for two professors, one at U of Chicago and one at Trinity U in Texas. I'm definitely heavily influenced by the Goffmanites. But I never went on to graduate school. I let my wife go through that agony at the U of C.

I still read heavily, and I'm regularly accused of being an academic. Since most of my friends are either academics (I'm even married to one) or artists/writers, it's hard to tell if that is really true. Yeah, it's true: I tend to do research on things. When I got posted to a role-based access control project, I ran a bunch of research to see where we were. (We weren't doing anything that wasn't already done.) When I got posted to a risk management gig, I started reading the greats on risk, finding them through INFORM's journal search. Although you can't get Harvard Business Review on INFORM, you can get Management Information Sciences, a perenniel fave here in Wonderland.

I'll admit to having several influences. Lots of church folk growing up. And I still have a Baptist's heart for democracy, which only sounds silly today. The Baptists coined the phrase "Religious Liberty" back in the 1600s. A lot of my other thinking comes from, believe it or not, DC war comics. Bob Kanigher and Joe Kubert had some great stories that taught more about being human than glorified war. Honor, friendship and loyalty were the bywords, no matter the price. Currently, both Jerry Bridges and Peter Block are shaping my thinking. Block always says that you can only teach someone what they already know, so I suppose that I'm not getting anything for my money from either one -- but it surely doesn't feel that way.

Bosses have had a big influence on me, too. Joannes, Kearl and Kearns were all important in how I do my job and think about management. They are in the line with "He-Man" Shaeffer and Dr.Allen, Mr. Wheeler and Mrs. Ristovich, all of whom taught me things when they didn't know that I was looking.

I went to high school in the rust belt, with a bunch of people who just weren't that crazy about learning. The teachers were overworked and overaged. I remember getting the first day lecture in my senior government class where the teacher pointed out that although he had 42 students, he only had 32 desks. "I'm counting on some of you to be sick, skip or drop out every day." One of the guys got caught doing lines in the back of the room.

The school was almost bankrupt: we went to half-days, used donated used copy paper from the local industries (I remember always being thrilled when I got some obtuse diagram from the jet engine manufacturer.) We were nixed out of having a debate team but I was able to get the drama club restarted.

Yes, I am a geek: I was valedictorian, National Merit Scholar and regional orchestra. I went to a liberal arts college that was cheaper than our state school because they loved merit scholars, but it wasn't Harvard or MIT. Lucky for me, since I met the woman with whom I want to spend the rest of my life at that liberal arts school.

I am a Christian, of the Presbyterian persuasion. For the most part, I adhere to the Westminster Confession of Faith. Faith is best observed in action, as it gets worked out in someone's life. Sometimes I have the hope of glory; sometimes I feel absolutely abandoned by God. Sometimes I doubt that he exists. Sometimes I know that he's real like I know that it's me typing this. Inexplicably, God has chosen to adopt me and it is in him that I find all of my identity. I can run but I can't hide. "Ain't nobody can hide from God" sang Blind Willie Johnson. I have had a lot of weird experiences that I just can't explain. I'd love to be a super-rationalist, but my experience of God keeps getting in the way.

Since writing this, I've become a member of the Christian Reformed Church. Even I can't tell you what that means.

I did my first commercial website (an online catalog) in 1994 (beta) with go-live in early 1995. I made no money off of this. I used pico and some Windows-based graphics editors, with a smattering of Macintosh time for Photoshop and Illustrator. It's been a long time.

I moved to Europe for awhile and didn't do much with the web. I wrote Windows Help and printed documentation. And I taught a guy whose first two languages were Dutch and French how to write documentation in English.

I noticed that I've talked a bit about youth in this blog. Well, I volunteered as a junior high youth leader for several years. My greatest success as a human being was as a youth leader of "third nation" kids abroad. What a great experience. I'm not sure that there is some great formula for working with kids. I do wish that I had been more supervised by someone older and wiser, who had already chased his kids out the door and into life.

I somehow got roped into working with youth again. I'm a terrible youth leader. Really. Should be fired quickly. But the kids I have like me too much. I'm really incompetent at it.

I'm married to the perfect trophy-wife: a PhD-wielding, internationally cited blonde bombshell. Well, she's my fantasy of the perfect wife. No insurance has meant that we've been saving to pay for maternity fees so no kids. I've spent 39 months of the first 128 of our marriage either fully or partially unemployed. Maternity is expensive.

I've learned to see things differently. I've owned my own consulting firm, worked with a variety fo partners and have a baby coming mid 2007. Maternity is really expensive.