These mini-biographies always remind me of a middle school essay assignment: "Sum up the purpose of your existence in 500 words or less..."

I'll grant a human life is a nobler topic to write on than "My Summer Vacation" but the task is equally futile. I couldn't fully explain my life to you even if I took a hundred pages, which is far more than you'd care to read.

Nevertheless I intend to make my own venture into the world of autobiography, because I believe sort-of-knowing a person is better than not knowing them at all. And because I think the introspection is good for me.

And because I like to talk about myself.

I was born in Livermore, California and grew up there with my six siblings. Together we survived middle school, several earthquakes, and one rather large fire.

My father introduced me to parallel processing and gate theory when I was about seven. (I studied these subjects again in high school, and absorbed them much better the second time round.) He also introduced me to gwbasic, and patiently watched as I repeatedly demonstrated my first program for him.

(In case you're curious, that program was a "talking computer" which dominated the conversation and steered it according to the "yes" and "no" responses of the user. I thought it was wonderful at the time.)

My mother taught me how to laugh. She used to say that "every cloud has a do-it-yourself silver lining" and no one is better at do-it-yourself-ing than my mother. She's reupholstered furniture, sold crafts at boutiques, and mastered the art of storytelling. Maybe someday she'll finally teach me how to sew...

The rest of my family filled in the gaps of my education. My older sisters introduced me to horses, colored pencils, and Anne McCaffery. My older brothers welcomed me into their games of Dungeons and Dragons, Laser Tag, and newspaper sword fights.

I discovered books early on in life. My parents say the kid across the street took it upon himself to teach me how to read when I was three, but I don't remember it. I just remember spending hours by our little bookshelf in the Family Room, reading first about Dick and Jane, then about horses named Doodlebug, then about dragons and witches and magic spells.

The transition from reading stories to writing them was almost unconscious. I don't think I was older than ten when I first began tapping away in WordPerfect 5.1. I won my first writing contest when I was in 8th grade, and won my second in the 12th.

My colored pencils were not entirely ignored during this time. I filled three folders with drawings of girls in beautiful dresses, and I once won a genuine Enterprise-shaped phone in a "design your own Extra-Terrestrial" contest. (I can't remember what I did with the phone-- maybe it's still in my closet somewhere.)

As for programming, I kept up with that, too. Decided to make a career of it, in fact, for all that I love stories and pictures as well. Maybe somewhere between technicolor Web sites and Interactive Video Games, I can manage to make a career out of all three. Or maybe one or two will have to be satisfied with the status of Preferred Hobbies.

I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and am currently majoring in Computer Science at Brigham Young University.