My name is Mike, like many other 31-year-old men, since it was the most popular male name something like 4 years running when I was born.  I enjoy making people laugh, reading about new technologies, and the stock market.  When I am doing none of those things, I spend time with my fiancé wife Stacy and my dog Stuart.  We relocated to California in the fall of 2007 and have been adjusting ever since.  

It’s been a slow process, but we are making progress. We both miss our friends and families very much.

I grew up in southern Connecticut during the 1980’s in a New Haven suburb called Hamden, and was educated in the public school system save for 1 year of Catholic school (6th grade) despite not being Catholic. I got my first computer in 5th grade, an Apple II GS, and learned how to program in basic. After a few years, I became interested in the games available on the PC that I couldn’t get in my local electronics store for my Apple. So in my freshman year of high school, 1991, I got a 486sx 25mhz.

Shortly after this I would enter the online world and find my way onto the internet. I discovered online bulletin boards (BBS) from other kids at school, and even met kids from other towns from these boards. One of them was more of a hacker than the rest, and before long I had learned how to make and use a red box and was getting onto the internet via some accounts at Yale University that they may not have known we were using. Interesting fact: In 1991, MANY Yale students used the password “abc123.” For those who were smarter with their passwords, we used cracker jack.

Because of this early activity, I’ve watched the web grow from basically nothing, I browsed with lynx, it was all text and there were no graphics. The connection was dial-up, and was not a direct connection between a home computer and the internet, but rather a connection to a mainframe. And that mainframe was connected on the internet. It wasn’t until a few years later, when Yale added SLIP and PPP connections that we used winsock to connect to.

After finishing high school, I went to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where I double majored in Political Science and Journalism.

I graduated in 1999 and moved to Boston and began my career at Boston.com. After working at various other places around Boston and it’s North Shore, I started working for Apple in one of their retail stores. I was quickly promoted to genius, and then shortly after that offered a position out in Cupertino where I currently work.

In the Fall of 2009, I enrolled at San Jose State University for grad school to get my MBA from the Lucas Graduate School of Business.