How I ended up in California

• Number of years of my life I wanted to live in California: 0

• Number of years I lived in California: 24

Ancient history

One of my brothers went to Stanford and worked at Genentech, so I had a chance to visit the San Francisco quite a few times. Loved it. Nice climate. Foggy. Clean city. Clean transportation although inadequate. It was a place that seemed a lot nicer than Chicago at the time

College

In 1996, I lived in North Carolina. Racist. Homophobic. A mix of educated and highly ignorant people.

I always loved technology but was too poor to buy any of it. I remember seeing a NeXT machine at the university bookstore and the education price was $10,000—at that time I made $18,000 a year!

I didn’t want to be rich, but being poor felt like I was unable to do things that were very important to me.

Oregon

I had been to Oregon several times (though never Portland) and always loved it there. It felt like home to me. I’d driven the whole Oregon coast, one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen (althoug…