Today I realized I don’t really have an About Me page.
I grew up in Hood River, Oregon, and attended first through tenth grade there. In the beginning of my junior year of high school (1989), I moved to the Coeur d’Alene area of North Idaho. I got interested in computers when my father purchased a Commodore 64 for Christmas in 1985, if I remember correctly. I had a cassette drive and a 9-pin impact printer. They were both slow. I quickly learned how to operate the C=64 and then discovered programming. I’ve been working with computers ever since.
In 1992 I accepted a call to serve as a missionary for the LDS church in Central and Southwestern Taiwan for two years, where I learned to speak, read, and write Mandarin Chinese. This was my first out-of-country travel experience, and I’ve been hooked ever since. I lived in Taichung, Kaohsiung, PingTung, HsinYing, and ChiShan. My favorite place was ChiShan, where I met my brother Manu, one of the coolest people I’ve ever known. I still plan on visiting him and his family in New Zealand some day.
My parents divorced shortly after I returned home in 1994.
In 1996 I started working for a small software company called Advanced Relational Technology. Aside from a short hiatus in China, I’ve been working there ever since. The company is now called Chief Architect, and I run their IT department.
I returned to Taiwan in 1996, 1997, 1999, and 2001 for vacations and to visit friends. In 1997 I was just passing through on my way to Kunming, Yunnan, China, where I worked and lived for 9 months for Yangguang JiTuan. Kunming has the best weather on the planet, the Chinese don’t call it “the City of Eternal Spring” for nothing. I did some sightseeing in Beijing before returning home. A highlight of this trip was being part of the 1997 Hong Kong celebrations.
I came back to Idaho just in time for my father to remarry, which was part of the decision to come back home in the first place. I went back to Chief Architect and continued where I left off the year before.
In 1999, I met a cute girl named Lorien, who just moved back to North Idaho, but I was too shy to ask her out. Six years later we were married.
In 2001 I purchased my first home, where I still live. I married my wife on 05/05/05. She picked the date so she could remember it easy. I don’t have a problem remembering dates. Or any numbers, really.
For our honeymoon, we saw Paris, London, and a good part of Ireland. The next year, Lorien’s parents took us on a vacation to Jamaica. In 2007, we took a cruise to the Mediterranean and had a great time visiting Italy, Greece, Croatia, and Turkey. In 2008, we took another cruise, this time to the Baltics. Our itinerary included London, Copenhagen, Berlin, Helsinki, St. Petersburg, Estonia, and Holland. We also took a few days to see the highlands of Scotland, one of my favorite places in the world.
You can see many of my pictures at my Picasa gallery.
2 Responses to “About Jacob”
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Quoth Maya Joy
November 10th, 2008 at 9:45 pm Jacob! We were so surprised to read your comment…great to hear from you!! I will try to keep up on our site so I don’t get months behind again in photos. I think the children each grew 6 inches since I last updated the site. Not very funny. Anyway…I just read the above blog (About Jacob) and you may want to edit the eighth paragraph (cut girl). Anyway, I am so happy to know of your site now. MJ |
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Quoth Scurvy Jake
November 11th, 2008 at 9:52 am Yeah, I guess I should use a spellchecker, but then again, it wouldn’t have caught that word… Perhaps I should read my posts before making them live. I usually see typos as I’m typing, but if I didn’t see it I have no other way to catch it. So thanks! |