Most recently, I'm a retired public defender. After twenty years as a software developer, I went to law school, after which I practiced criminal defense, defending rape, robber, and murder in Arizona and Washington. Primarily a trial lawyer, and adjunct faculty member at the University of Washington law school, I have argued at the court of appeals, and have reported opinions in two states. I've represented between 1200 and 2000 clients in DUIs.

I was a founding member of the ANSI C++ committee, and designed the Word Object Model at Microsoft. As a software developer I worked at SAIC, Sunquest, Data General, and Microsoft, as well as a couple of startups. I worked on in-house programming languages, and network solutions using DECnet and TCP/IP. Before that, in the 1980's, a partner and I connected the San Diego Supercomputer Center's Crays to the internet.

I have three graduate degrees (MS in computer science, MBA, and JD). I'm also a high school dropout.