Stats

Height

6'1

Weight

160 lbs. (yeah, I'm an ectomorph)

Eyes

Blue-Green

Hair

Dark-Brown and thinning

Handedness

Left

Personality Type

INTJ (Myers-Briggs)

Zodiac (just for fun)

Taurus (April 24th)

Bio

I was born and raised in Northern Virginia (the "Silicon Dominion" ). The only child of a teacher (mother) and a butcher/chef (father). Both parents now have successful post-retirement careers respectively as a tax consultant and a wood craftsman, artisan, and builder. Father still refuses to charge for the vast majority of his products and services-- though I have no idea why. The folks at "This Old House" and our local Home Depot could definitely use his help. He's the only guy I know who can actually critique Norm Abram's and Sam Maloof's work intelligently. Oh yeah, and every meal at my parent's house is NOT to be missed.

I took an early interest in the sciences, but strangely not in math. Mathematics was very un-fun until calculus and geometry. Math was something one did, much like sewing burlap in art class, to satify a grade requirement. Science (observing nature) and Engineering (bulding things) was always, and continues to be, "fun". I was always attracted to pragmatic approaches of applied theory--though maturity has increased my appreciation for the power and purity of ideas and belief systems.

In high school I did all the typical geek things like role-playing AD&D, programming computers and playing video games, but also played tennis, studied Latin, and worked on the yearbook staff. This was before term 'geek' entered the common lexicon. A few friends and I started to write our own modern-genre role-playing system dubbed "Automatic Action". In retrospect, it was a great learning exercise in mathematical modeling, but at the time it was just loads of fun creating a framework which modeled and facilitated all sorts of interactions. I did the whole science fair gig and managed to earn an internship at the U.S. Army's R&D lab and other research positions for summer jobs. At the R&D center, I had my first exposure to "real" computers--specifically a Sun workstation (Unix elegance) and a Mac 2 (the beauty of GUI). Previously I had only explored the world of my 8 bit Atari 800XL. The machines at work had 8 MORE bits in their instruction set and they were networked (early BNC-connected 'hose' Ethernet). The network speed was addictive--orders of magnitude away from BBSing at 1200 baud. There was also the whole Internet thing, but at that time it was just Darpa-Net to me.

I graduated from West Springfield High School and went on to study mechanical and electrical engineering at Virginia Tech. After a year of 'wondering' I finally settled on electrical engineering though I was more attracted to electromagnetics and digital abstractions than "stuff with wires" (the math/beauty thing again). Besides, as a southpaw, I was always wiring things up bass-ackwards. It made for lots of "magic smoke" in the lab, but poor experimental results. I often ended up modeling everything with a computer program to get my lab reports done on time. One day a friend showed me PSPICE—doh.

After graduation, I did the start-up thing (C++ on Windows), the medium-sized company thing (Web, Java, and data mining) and the large-company thing (mobile computing, XML, and 'consulting'--learning how to talk to executives).

Now I'm starting my own consulting business, learning to play Go (Wei-Chi), enjoying too many games of Advance Wars 2 (warning: Flash), attempting to get 'into' paintball with friends, and not getting enough driving time in my BMW.

KeithWilliams.com

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