short version:
Was born in Colorado but only lived there about a year. Moved to Oklahoma City and it sucked. Went to a catholic private school with my only memory of it being the nuns being jerks. The summer before 4th grade I moved to a podunk redneck shit kicker racist town called Whitesboro, Texas and it sucked more.
At about 6th grade I realized I wanted to make video games after playing Final Fantasy III (or IV I guess) and reading about Digipen in Nintendo Power. My parents told me there was no way I was going to go to Digipen because it wasn't an accredited four year university. After that, I decided I was going to be a comic book artist and even had my own little company full of characters and its own universe. I also thought I would be writer at some point in there but I'm a shitty writer so gave up on that one (though I'm an excellent story teller and my story turned into an incredible DnD campaign years and years later).
Graduated high school (nothing real interesting there, played a lot of M:tG and that was about it) and went to Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX because they accepted me. They're actually the only school I applied to because I really didn't care much. I went into Computer Science because I figured that could be neat and then went ahead and tried to do the Math double major because I could.
I started college thinking I was going to be the good little student who never drank or did drugs who would get stuff done. a week before classes I already had a girlfriend, was getting laid regularly, and on my way to being an alcoholic. Somehow made it through my first year and failed most of my classes. Good thing for freshman forgiveness and being able to just wipe that year off the records!
Second through fifth year was more of the same really, not a lot interesting. I use to think a B was unacceptable in high school, at this time I was happy with a C-.
Barely graduated college with a BS in Computer Science (whopping 2.4 GPA) and dropped the Math major to a Math minor I forgot to declare and never really cared. I tried to find jobs but SMU is shit for CS and couldn't find anything. I worked at Best Buy Geek Squad for a month or two when I talked to one of my friends who got accepted to the Guildhall at SMU.
I had heard of the Guildhall but figured it was only the super nerdy asian genius CS guys that got in, not the guys like my friend. I tried to get in on a whim a week after the application deadline. I turned in an old Neverwinter Nights module and some hand drawn Dungeons and Dragons maps and I was accepted into Cohort 5 and it was officially awesome.
Spent the next two working and nothing else. It sucked since I pretty much woke up around 8AM and worked until 2AM for about two straight years but it was worth it and fun. I eventually graduated with 3.6 GPA in level design.
Looked for a job and that sucked. I procrastinated and got a late start so the placement lady was always on my back. Went on interviews and got offers from Pandemic, King's Isle and Vicious Cycle and could have gotten offers from Bioware, Kaos, and a few others if I could actually leave the Dallas area. The girlfriend had a good job and didn't want to leave so I was stuck there.
Spent the next three months unemployed trying desperately to find a job in the Dallas area really trying to work for Gearbox. Remembered I knew someone that worked at Terminal Reality and talked to them on a whim. Got an interview with them after the HR lady lost my LD test a few times and got an offer the next day. They didn't tell me what I would be working on in the interview so I was afraid I was either going to be working on Bloodrayne III or some crappy movie game like Spyhunter II or worse. I told myself it would be alright because this was only experience until I got to Gearbox so I accepted the offer.
Got to Terminal Reality, found out I would be working on Ghostbusters: the Video Game and been working here ever since and loved every minute of it. Since then (a little over a year ago) it's been work work work and got married a few weeks ago.
-edit-
So not so short, meh, whatever. I like to write.
