There are three parts to my bio: personal, work before Microsoft and work at Microsoft.
Read one, none or all of them...whatever you want.
Bio (personal):
Hmm, where to start...how about the very beginning. :-) I was born in 1970 and we lived in
Dunlap, IL, which is a small
rural town a few miles NE of Peoria, IL.
That's where I went to elementary and junior high school
(this is the new school...the one I was in has since been torn down and only had a few walls
standing when I visited in 2000, which means I'm getting old). My mom and dad divorced when I
was 11 (they told me on my 11th birthday...that was a fun one, eh). A few years later my dad,
step-mom and brother moved out to California (I honestly don't remember which city they moved to
first...they moved around a lot). Shortly after that, when I was 13 and just about to enter my
freshman year of high school, my mom and I moved to the big city...Houston, TX.
Boy, was that a change!
I graduated from Langham Creek high school
in 1988 and then started at the University of Houston that fall,
majoring in Accounting. We were living in Friendswood, TX
(just south of Houston near NASA's Johson Space Center
where my step-father worked as an engineer) so I transferred from the main UH campus to the
Clear Lake branch. I moved out of my Mom & step-father's house
when I was 19 (1989) deciding I'd prefer to do things on my own rather than bend to the rules of
'the roof I was living under.' Like so many other teenagers out there. :-) That decision forced my
college years to stretch out to 7 instead of the normal 4 since I had to support myself and take
mostly night classes. The point though is that it can be done if you just set your mind to it!
During that time I worked at Builder's Square
(before Home Depot came to town and cleaned up),
JC Penney (as an Al Bundy wannabe shoe salesman) and then
Guaranty Federal Bank to support myself. I met a
ton of interesting people along the way and a few life-long friends too boot!
In May of 1995 I graduated from UHCL with my Bachelor's of Science
degree in Accounting.
At this point I had lived in Houston for 12 years and was sick and tired of the
hot, humid weather and flat
terrain. So in June '95 I moved to Snohomish, WA
and lived with my Dad and step-mother for the first few months while I took some time to kick back and
relax, which included a week long trip to Cozumel, Mexico to
scuba dive and a 3 day weekend trip to Hawaii to visit my brother
who was in the Navy at the time.
A few months after moving to Washington I met my future wife, Leslie, at
Frontier Village Veterinary Clinic where she worked
as a vet technician. In fact, her older sister has worked there for more than 20 years! She's 3rd
from the right in the front standing row in this picture
and here she is
(on the right) with one of her dobermans. Leslie stopped working at the clinic in 1998, but we're
still close friends with the doctors and several of the staff.
Leslie and I married in July of 1997
and we moved to Arlington, WA shortly
thereafter. It's a great little community to live in with a nice small town atmosphere and it's close to both
our families. Leslie's older sister, husband and their daughter live in Granite Falls
as does their father, her younger sister lives in Goldbar, my Dad and step-mother still live in Snohomish
and my little brother lives in Kirkland.
It's really nice to have family close.
In January of 2004, our daughter was
born and changed our lives forever! She's been a spitfire since day one when her big head forced Leslie
to push for more than an hour to get her out (I'm hoping that means she's got more brain power than her
dad)! She's very active and a lot of work, but she's also a bundle of joy and happiness that I love more
than anything else on this earth! Fatherhood definitely agrees with me.
In 2006 Leslie and I decided that we needed to go our separate ways and began the process of
divorce. At this point in time, I'm focused on my daughter and making sure that my new life does not have
a negative affect on her.
Bio (work - before MSFT):
There was (work) life before Microsoft! :-) When I started college in the fall of 1988 at
U of H, I wasn't too sure what I wanted to study. My passion through
high school was drafting and architecture. I won at the state level all four years with several
first/second places and a few thirds. I was good at it, very good at it...but...with
AutoCad taking over
engineering and architecture firms, drafting on paper was quickly becoming a thing of the past so I
had to do some thinking. After a lot of reading and research I found that a lot of smart, successful
business people have an accounting background. I figured it would serve me well not only as a CPA
(if I went that direction), but also in general with any business I ended up in (if you can't make
the dollars balance then you don't have a business!).
Seven years later I graduated from UHCL with my Bachelors of
Science in Accounting. Three weeks after graduation I moved from Houston to Seattle.
My first six months in Washington were comprised of working a temp job, meeting my future wife,
playing golf, scuba diving in Cozumel, Mexico, playing golf, visiting my brother in Hawaii, riding
his Navy destroyer back to California, duck hunting with my Dad, trying to start a multi-level
marketing business (don't do it!), hiking the beautiful areas around here and playing some more golf.
All in all, it was a great time!
In December of 1995 I knew my vacation was over and I needed to start my career. I responded to
the few accounting jobs that were listed in the local paper's classifieds, but no dice. So I sent
out 52 resumes to all of the public accounting firms from Everett
to Mount Vernon.
I got one response. One. :-|
I went in for the interview the first week of January and it went something like this:
- Him: I see you have a degree in accounting.
- Me: Yes.
- Him: Tax season is about to start and we just had one of our staff accountants quit.
- Me: I see.
- Him: Do you know debits from credits?
- Me: Yes.
- Him: How soon could you start if I offer you a position?
- Me: Right away. [with a smile starting to grow on my face]
- Him: How does $12 an hour sound?
- Me: Sounds great! [with a big grin on my face since $8.30 was the highest I had made previously]
- Him: See you Monday.
There was a lot more personal BS�ing before that, but the whole interview was less than 30 minutes
and the debits/credits question was the only 'technical' thing he asked me.
I worked as a staff accountant for that firm from January 1996 to September 1999. I took the CPA
exam three times in my first year and half. At the time the exam consisted of four different tests,
each about five hours long over two consecutive days. It sucked! The deal was that if you passed two
or more of the sections then you carried those forward and only had to take the remaining (not passed)
sections during the next test. If you passed none or only one then you had to take all four sections
over again. Very few people pass all four the first time through, but most will pass two of them and
then be able to focus on the other two the next time around. For example, it took my boss five times
to get his CPA license�but he was (and still is) one of the smartest business men I have ever known.
The first time I studied my ASS off! I only passed one section (Law) and was 1 point away from passing
Tax. I was pissed. I was a 4.0 student and had never failed a test before in my life so I was very
disappointed. Then you combine that with the fact that after more than a year of experience in public
accounting I was discovering that it didn�t really trip my trigger. It was a job and that was about it.
The next two times I took the CPA exam I just didn�t have my heart in it. Without becoming a Certified
Public Accountant, I had pretty much relegated myself to a staff accountant role as long as I stayed
in public accounting. My only alternative was to go into corporate accounting (working in the
finance/accounting department for some company). That didn�t really intrigue me either. Basically,
within a few years I had decided that accounting just wasn�t my thing.
During this time, two significant things happened that helped to shape my future. First, in spring
of 1996, my little brother had gotten out of the navy and within a few months started
A+ and
MCSE training at
Strategy Computers. It�s kind of funny, because
at the time I remember telling my wife that I would never want to spend all day long trying to fix
computers. She reminds me of that periodically when I work late. :-) I watched him really grow and
get excited about his work through his first few years and it was inspiring to me (who was becoming
less and less passionate about my work). Secondly, in our firm of 15 people I had just naturally
become the computer go-to guy. I seemed to be able to fix most of the trivial problems with
Windows 95 and the tax software we used. We were running Novel 3.12 and went through 5 sketchy-at-best
consultants in an 18 month period. My boss finally asked me if I would like to run the network and
he offered me an extra $6,000 a year to take on the additional responsibility. I said �sure, why not.�
It was during those two years in which I was both a staff accountant and the network administrator
for our firm that I discovered my true passion and talent...computers, the internet, networking and
all the stuff in between. I grew to hate my accounting responsibilities with almost as much passion
as I loved learning about technology. I would spend a lot more time on my network admin duties than
I would on billable hours for clients. In addition to this, I saw my little brother have a lot of
success in his career working for Compaq (then Digital) as a vendor at
Microsoft. He had started in 1997 and within a few months
was making a higher salary than I was with a college degree and three years of experience. D�oh!
In the spring of 1999 I made a deal with my boss to send me to A+
and MCSE training at
Strategy Computers so I could upgrade our Novel 3.12
network to NT4. I went through 3 months of courses during the firm�s slow period (summer), got my first
MCP in Windows 95 and proceeded with upgrading our small network to an NT4 domain. It went off without
too many hitches.
Within a month my brother scored me an interview for an operations analyst position with
Compaq, who was a vendor with
Microsoft...and so started my formal IT career. Needless to say,
they offered and I accepted. :-)
Bio (work @ MSFT):
1.30.2007 - to be updated at some date in the near future
~tod