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TerrisLinenbachTerris Linenbach, technologist to varying degrees since 1980.
 Circa 2000 with downtown San Mateo, CA in the background looking out towards the train station from second avenue. Yes, that's my real name. My mom thought it would look nice on a nameplate. It does. Thanks Mom! Being called Terris while going to school would have earned me a beating every day by my classmates. So, my friends and family call me Terry, but I have never liked saying that name. Born 1970 Fresno, California, USA. Grew up in Clovis, CA. Currently located in Burlingame, California, USA, the place where dirt costs more than gold per ounce. On my father's side of the family, I'm the third generation of Austrian immigrants who started a family business as a petrol station in the 1920s and grew to three NAPA stores in Sanger, Auberry, and Clovis, California. I grew up dusting inventory, painting floors, and delivering parts to men covered in grease who labored in steamy dilapidated garages plastered with yellowed posters of scantily-clad women. On my mother's side, there's the blood of Dutchmen and even two Native American (for lack of a better term) tribes. In October 1980, my father bought an Apple II+ computer with 48k of RAM and a disk drive. A few years later, I was coding in AppleSoft Basic and 6502 assembly with the help of a tutor, Matthew Mills, four years my senior who became a trusted mentor and friend. Together we set upon cyberspace, producing many dead-end ideas for adventure and action games, which culminated in two online bulletin boards, one named Trippers' City out of Clovis and another called The Battlements which briefly ran in Danville, California in 1986. Although crude by today's standards (initially 300 baud and then maxing out at 2400 baud), both "sites" were innovative and well-received experiments in online gaming, messaging, and online customer service. Oddly enough, there is an online fantasy RPG called "Terris" to which I am not associated. Terris is what we envisioned for Trippers' City and The Battlements but never quite got there, due to the sad fact that teenagers have to become adults. I've always been an oddball and never fit into an easily labeled box. I ran cross country and played soccer and baseball in elementary school. I played on the golf team in eigth grade for Kastner middle school. I played football my first two years for Clovis West High School as a starter at the wide receiver and corner back positions. It was difficult dealing with the trappings of being cool and popular in the public school system while simultaneously pursing what I really loved, which was listening to REM and The Smiths, writing code, playing sports, drinking coffee and booze, and surfing Compuserve. I just barely made it. After leaving Clovis, I attended UC Davis, where I met a woman who became my friend and later my wife. We were married in June 1991 and we had our first child Kate in January 2001. What can I say? I worked a lot. We moved to San Francisco in May 1992 so I could start my first real job at Andersen Consulting as a code slave. That began a string of employers which today totals 12 and shows no sign of stopping (one year I had three W-2's and it's not uncommon to have two). To be employed in high tech is to be a nomad. Those who are loyal to a small group of friends are the lucky ones. Otherwise there's no loyalty here. In my free time I write content for my network of web sites, mainly because I treasure the idea that I will be able to recall facts at some later date. I think it's a symptom of information hoarding. I try my best to not horde physical objects but mostly fail doing so. Since the information is available to the public perhaps others can benefit too. This behavior is nothing new given that I've been writing technical mini-manuals since the 4th grade and running BBS's since age 12. I sometimes practice golf and play it briefly on Saturday mornings. I can be found at any given Starbucks between downtown San Francisco and Palo Alto with my laptop.
The incomplete list in order is Linenbach Auto Parts, Hunt's Foods, Andersen Consulting (Accenture - w/ longer term gigs at Sun and DHL Systems), Sybase, Intuit, Sagent Technology, NetAcumen, Responsys, Integrated Decision Systems, Sana Security, MarkMonitor, Teradata.
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