I grew up in a small town (< 300 people) near coastal North Carolina, before being adopted at age 8 (along with my younger sister) and moving to Raleigh, NC. It was there that I started developing a love of computers ... starting with a little vTech one-line display computer with a BASIC programming function.

I eventually graduated to Pascal to write modules for my favorite BBS game, Legend of the Red Dragon. Towards the end of the 90s, the Internet was fast becoming a thing, so I did the obligatory dabbling in HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.