I have always been drawn to computers. Fascinated. One of my very first memories was exploring the family computer in the morning before preschool.

Moments that shaped my journey

1. 1995

   Discovering the family computer

   

   Those early mornings with the Compaq Presario and Windows 95 lit the fuse. I learned that a glowing screen could be a playground, a library, and a portal all at once.

2. 1996

   From games to curiosity

   

   From Carmen Sandiego to Learning in Toyland (and even wanting to play Duke Nukem), games slowly turned into questions about how everything on the screen was built.

3. 1997

   Breaking things to understand them

   

   Accidentally downgrading AOL with System Restore was my first real lesson in how fragile and powerful computers can be—and that I was willing to break things to learn.

4. 1998

   Realizing this was the path

   

   Every experiment, every broken install, every late night exploring taught me that this wasn’t just a hobby. It was the foundation of a career built on curiosity and craft.

In the early morning hours as my father ironed his dress clothes for work, the blue hues of dawn illuminated the CRT of the Compaq Presario sporting Windows 95, pushed along by an Intel Pentium at a blazing speed of 100Mhz. I would have many encounters with that computer, including a wanting observation of Duke Nukem. While I did not understand my mother’s objection to me watching him play the game (pixelated strippers), I did understand the possibilities represented by the machine. At every opportunity, I explored it. From Carmen Sandiego to Learning in Toyland, I could not get enough of the computer. Even as I inadvertently destroyed it using the then-cutting edge System Restore (which, to my father’s chagrin, downgraded the version of AOL from 4.0 to the much maligned and inferior 3.0), I knew that the machine held the keys to my destiny.