About
20 Years of Experience
I was born in Canada on the West Coast, just north of Vancouver in a little town called Sechelt.
My parents were of the generation that was, well, feelin’ groovy. They left California for the woods of British Columbia.
Apparently, the cabin in the woods where they lived had such a good roof that when it snowed, you could see the occasional snowflake drifting down from the rafters. I don’t remember the place, but I do know that I once ate a slug and once fell in the duck pond and stayed under for a bit longer than I should have.
Soon, my parents, uh, stopped feelin’ so groovy and went their separate ways. I ended up in Regina, Saskatchewan (dare ya to say either one, the first makes you blush, the second makes you stutter) on the prairies of Canada with my mom and stepdad; my dad stayed in British Columbia.
I went to University in Regina, and received a bachelor’s degree in computer science. At said university, which had the distinguished name of, what else, University of Regina, I met my wife, Carla. Actually, when I met her she wasn’t my wife yet. That came later.
Carla wanted to become a psychologist, and, bless her, to go to grad school. By this time my dad had moved back to California. He was born in Palo Alto, where my grandmother still lived. She graduated from the U of R in April 1994, we got married in June, and came to California in August with no jobs and little money. It was going to be 4 years and back to Canada. California does get a grip on you.
Now, coming from a Canadian city of 180,000, we weren’t exactly metropolitan. We were terrified. However, when we came over that green bridge onto Park Street it was as if we’d been holding our breath and could finally exhale. It felt like home.
After 5 years of commuting to a geek job in SF, I broke out on my own as an independent geek and did OK, but got tired of working all day in a home office and got more tired of the fallout from the dot com bust (terrible hourly rates). My mother-in-law was a real estate agent in Regina, and she said she thought it was a career I should pursue. So I interviewed at 5 real estate offices in Alameda, and immediately felt at home at Bayside Real Estate. The rest is history.