Scott Brown
Well, what to say? I was born in Boston, Mass (actually, Lynn) about 38 years ago. I graduated Valedictorian at Coffee High School in Alabama and got a scholarship to MIT where I double majored in Philosophy and Computer Science. After achieving my Doctrate in Philosophy (Summa cum laude, btw), I met my supermodel wife at one of my friend's keggers. We've been married for 5 years now and life is just perfect... Well, maybe not... I was born in Lynn (a good "Southie" town) and did bop around in New England for the first 10 years of my life but then wound up in Plano, TX for my formative "high school years." I spent alot of time skipping school and being that "Rebel without a cause," but got out of school no worse for wear. I wound up at the University of North Alabama for a half semester (I did graduate at Coffee High in Florence, AL and wound up playing for the soccer team there (I was varsity at CHS)) and the best thing that happened for me there was the front row seats when Cheap Trick played their auditorium (there was only about 200 ppl at the concert. Damns them ppls are bass-ackwards... :) I moved back to Dallas, bounced around in more than a few jobs while trying to become the next Jim Morrison double-threat (poetry and singing), which didn't work exactly as planned. I started cycling out of necessity; my Volvo just died going south on Central to which I left it in a parking lot at one of the hotels in Richardson. Cycling became a passion for me and when I found that I could actually start beating other people, I started taking it seriously. But that was not to be and eventually, I met my wife and followed her like a puppy dog to East Texas State University where I majored in Geology with a Vertebrate Paleontolgy emphasis (co-authored a few things with my ETSU mentor, <a href=http://www.geojeff.org>Dr. Jeff Pittman</a>. After a quick 2 years, I got the opportunity to do mulitmedia programming at Texas Parks and Wildlife in Austin so we packed up and moved down in Fall of '95. I eventually worked my way up to the Lead Technology Analyst for the Resource Protection division (first statewide NT 4 domain of any state agency! :) I was a total MS BS proselytizer. After nearly 5 years, I saw the light of Open Source / Free Software so 2 friends and I started a business (Triptych Microsystems) where we developed a hardware-based firewall for consumer broadband (I was the CTO and we applied for 7 patents but after the business shut down, we only kept one going through which is about to issue...). I eventually wound up at the City of Austin as one of their Information Security Analysts (I specialize in Open Source / Free Software). I currently hold numerous technical certifications: CISSP, MCSE, and a few Linux certifications. Politically, I'm a lefty-liberal and am not shy about getting in someone's face when they're just full of it (that's the scientific background in me; I NEED facts). I've written a few articles for various technical magazines but haven't been able to get them cleared by my management at work after the <a href=http://slashdot.org/articles/03/12/17/1517223.shtml>"Slashdot incident."</a> I was the Lead engineer for the various Open Source pilots we did a few years ago when the city was in the midst of the MS negotiations. Finally, I run a small non-profit, <a href=http://www.opennetworks.org>OpenNetworks</a> where we try to help other non-profits get their message out at the lowest possible technology cost. Political Suicide is just the latest in my seemingly never-ending hare-brained ideas to try and encourage some common ground between the ever-widening chasm of right and left.
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