About this monkey

A brief bio:

I was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee. I can’t say that I miss much from the deep south, save for thunderstorms, fireflies and really excellent barbecue.

I went to college at the University of Tennessee, starting in architecture and soon moving to Civil Engineering. At the same time, I put myself through college with a variety of side jobs, working as a bouncer, a trolley car driver, a book store clerk, a copy editor, a tutor, a library clerk, and best of all, as a show carpenter. The theater department had all the best parties. 🙂

So naturally, I ended up working in the computer industry. Go figure.

After school I went to San Diego (well, really a coastal bedroom community north, Encinitas) for a year and a half, working at a small software startup. From there I moved to the Silicon Valley and took a short contract at Apple Computer. I did a year at a computer peripheral company, Radius, (where I was also the voice for the company phone tree, oddly enough) then went back to Apple for a very long spell, the last half of that as an engineering manager for a fabulous team of software engineers.

After ten plus years at Apple, I took a year and a half off to slack and recharge. I took 400+ hours of massage training. I did a three-month road trip across the US in a VW camper bus. I completed an accelerated pre-med program.

After the break, I returned to Apple. Shortly thereafter I moved to Portland OR, where I worked (remotely) for the big fruit until Fall 2009. I decided to bail and head back to school, where I’m presently chasing a BS in Math.

With my copious free time, he says with a snort, I enjoy hiking, road trips, bicycling, cooking and enjoying the local music and theater scene. And I sometimes tutor math/physics/engineering.

I am unmarried and have no kids. And I’m perfectly happy about it. I think I’m allergic to white picket fences; I make a great boyfriend, but I’d be a lousy husband.

Why “laughing monkey”?

I think one of the more fucked up aspects of our species is that we think too much of ourselves. We like to pretend we’re some pinnacle of evolution, clearly unique and special in all of creation. We’d be a lot better off if we remembered we are just big, dumb monkeys. We’re barely one step removed from crapping in our hands and flinging poo at each other. We all need to take ourselves less seriously and remember that we’re just monkeys. Laughing monkeys.