I started life in southern and central Illinois but spent most of my growing up years in the little southwestern Missouri town of Carl Junction, near Joplin. The things that affected me most in those years were having a solid Christian family, many quality friendships, and (as I saw a little later in life) a love of messing with computers. In that era and in my school, at least, Apple was where it was at so I had fun playing with //e’s at school and a Commodore VIC-20 at home. Somehow I managed to short out and kill the VIC-20 trying to emulate a game paddle, so we bought an Apple //c which served me well for games, school work, and tying up the phone line for hours connecting to the area BBS dialups at a blazing 300 baud. IBM compatibles were just then coming along in the mid-80’s, but I didn’t get experience with them until after high school. Oh, and I’d give anything to be able to play Ladders again on a Kaypro II!
After graduating high school in 1987, I went to schools in Joplin and Manhattan, KS, then went out to Fullerton, CA to attend a Christian college there but eventually transferred over to California State University, Fullerton. I finished with a degree in Psychology because that was fascinating to me and I envisioned going into some kind of research area. I opted for a few programming classes (Fortran!), and also learned about Word Perfect, telnet, Kermit, email, and VAX systems… not knowing then how that would quickly turn into shaping my professional career.
In 1990 I met an awesome girl named Jocelyn Clark and we were married in 1992. After I graduated in 1993 we moved to Columbia, MO to be close to family again. Over the years we have been blessed with five children: Michaela, Benjamin, Elijah, Johanna, and Ami. Two are from the miracle of adoption, for which we are big proponents! We have our family blog at Wolfeshome.net.
We keep busy these days with homeschooling all our children, taking trips as often as possible (camping in the Destin, FL area is a favorite, as well as road trips to California and the Pacific Northwest, and flying to see family in Japan!), and enjoying our wooded 8-acre property.