In the years between the above and the end of high school, pretty much everything I did revolved around my love for computers. I played computer games, became intrenched in the local BBS community, and dabbled with a variety of programming languages (Basic, Quickbasic, Fortran, Pascal, Delphi).

Pre-internet computing was a taboo hobby, and I only knew two other people who even had a home computer. We would secretly swap games and programs in school so we would not to be ridiculed for being a 'nerd'.

The book to the right, released in April of 1984, contained large programs that had to be meticulously transcribed line-by-line. I don't think we ever actually got any of them to fully work, but we tried tirelessly.

The middle picture is a 300baud Phone Modem. It was the device used to "call" other computers in the 80s.

The bottom picture is a screenshot of an early computer RPG called Shard of Spring by Strategic Simulations Inc, and was one of my favorite games growing up. Early computer games were instrumental in my childhood, and were actually a lot more educational (while still a ton of fun) than they are now in days.

Because I was the youngest of six, I had a lot of freedom as a child, and was able to spend as much time as I wanted on the home computer. It was great, but there was a down side. I was far from a model student, and I would regularly neglect homework and studying for my computer passion. After high school graduation, I had no plan in life other than knowing I wanted to be a programmer, but had no idea how to make that happen. I didn't apply for any colleges.

The day after graduation, my brother Ron grabbed me and threw me in his car, and we started driving. I didn't even know where we were going. Ron worked for a restaurant chain called the 99s. He proceeded to inform me that I was going to be filling in as a dish washer at one particular location (not the location he worked at) that was short staffed. Mind you, I'd never worked a day in my life up to this point.

One day turned into a week, and a week into a month, and so on.. I was eventually promoted from Dishwasher to Prep Cook, then to Line Cook. It was all grueling work. Eventually, I was helping open new stores and train, and was on the track to becoming a store manager.

I ended up working at that restaurant for nearly eight years, and it was undeniably the best thing for me in hindsight. I honestly don't know where I would be in life today if not for the perseverance, work ethic, hustle and street smarts that were forged in the fires of that kitchen.

To the left is the zippo lighter my co-workers bought for me as a departing gift, with my start and end dates. Awesome people.

By my sophomore year, America Online was rolling out and it opened up a whole new world since it was a multi-user platform. There was still no internet, but it certainly was a precursor to what was to come.

A couple of years after high school is when dial-up internet arrived, along with the first web browsers etc. The IRC became the place to be as far as being able to communicate with people all over the world. Essentially, it was a massive network of servers that ran chatroom software, some public, some private but available for anyone with an internet connection and the know-how. This is where I became heavily involved with the The Scene:

The Warez scene, often referred to as The Scene,^[1] is a worldwide, underground, organized network of pirate groups specializing in obtaining and illegally releasing digital media for free before their official sale date.^[2] The Scene distributes all forms of digital media, including computer games, movies, TV shows, music, and pornography.^[3] The Scene is meant to be hidden from the public, only being shared with those within the community.

I created one particular group in 1997 called Fatigued Couriers Network. We specialized in couriering aka moving newly released software to Topsites around the globe using FXP, and we were really good at it. At one point I had access to all of the top FTP servers in the world. It took a lot of time and effort to build the relationships and the reputation required to be trusted enough to get invites to pre-channels, as well as introductions to Siteops and other prominent figures. The end goal was having access to all the Topsites and building the notoriety that would result from being skilled contributors to The Scene. My group was made up of a mix of couriers, coders, people who worked at large software companies, crackers, and artists. We eventually became a release group as well as couriers. The image to the right is called an .nfo file and was required by The Scene to accompany all releases. The third image is of one of our command line keygens.

I left from The Scene after Operation Buccaneer, which was a world-wide coordinated bust on the morning of December 11th, 2001. Several authorities had infiltrated The Scene much like an undercover cop would a drug ring:

On December 11, 2001, law enforcement agents in six countries targeted 62 people suspected of violating software copyright, with leads in twenty other countries. U.S. law enforcement agents, led by the United States Customs Service, raided computers in the economics department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,^[3] the University of California, Los Angeles, an "off-campus location" of the University of Oregon, and dorm rooms at Duke University and Purdue University.^[4] Information obtained led to a subsequent raid at the Rochester Institute of Technology,^[5] described by "warez gadfly 'ttol'" as one of "the two major hubs for communications between pirate groups" (along with the University of Twente).^[6] However, the universities themselves were not considered targets of the criminal investigation.^[7] Several software companies were also raided.^[5

Several of the sites I was a member of were raided, and the rest went dark for a while. I always considered the whole thing to be a fun hobby/game, and no worse than sharing movies or albums with your neighbors. It also never felt dangerous.. until then. My group carried on until at least 2006.

Legality aside, I did learn a lot about myself as far as my abilities to deal with and lead people during this time which is why it's included here. I'd imagine it's a very unique experience too, and a story worth telling!

In February 2009, a game came out called Darkfall. I ended up playing the game from the day it opened to till the day it shutdown in November 2012.

It was a massive multiplayer game with an open world, full loot pvp, and a territory control system. The game featured sieges and large scale battles not previously seen in any game before or since.

Anyway, myself along with another guy I met in the game became the leaders of a clan that had as many as 150 members plus allies at one point. On a daily basis, we would have to rally troops, command sieges, manage diplomacy, deal with internal conflict between members, plan events and sieges, and everything in between.

Believe it or not, this was an intense learning experience, and I credit a lot of my prevailing philosophies on management and leadership to the countless hours spent playing this game with a bunch of random people around the world. I still consider some of them good friends today.