Biography

The Early Years I was born Bruce Sterling Woodcock on June 20, 1970 in Sullivan, Missouri, the third child of Myron and Mary Woodcock. My middle name, Sterling, was also my father’s middle name and I was named in part after the former British Heavyweight Boxing Champion. I have an older brother, Steven, and an older sister, Kimberly. Growing up in a small town in the Midwest, I lived in a modest rural home outside of town on a 26-acre farm. My father owned and operated the town drive-in and movie theatre for several years, but we also had ducks, chickens, cattle, and horses on the farm. In the summer months we cut and bailed hay in the fields, and in the winter we had to cut the ice on the ponds for animals to have water to drink. I spent most of my personal time growing up reading books, watching television, playing RPG and board games with my brother and my friends, and later on, playing computer games. After I started reading comic books I spent a lot of time in my room making up elaborate superhero storylines and playing them out with my Star Wars toys. But I also enjoyed riding my bike, hiking in the woods and fishing in our ponds, and I spent many a night at the drive-in watching a lot of bad 70s films. I attended Spring Bluff R-15 Elementary School, a small rural school in nearby Spring Bluff. The school actually has a good reputation for quality schooling and even today many of the top high school graduates are former Spring Bluff students. I excelled at academics early on and graduated 6^th in my 8^th grade class in 1984. I went on to attend Sullivan High School where I continued to do well, graduating co-salutatorian (in other words, tied for 2^nd) with a 3.975 GPA in 1988. My graduation speech encouraged students to be individuals and to have the courage to be bold and unique. My early interest was clearly in science and mathematics, although I excelled at other subjects as well. At various points growing up I wanted to be an astronaut, a geologist, a mathematician, a chemist, or a scientist of some type. I was also very creative; I played the trumpet when I was younger and in high school I wrote several short stories and sang in the school choir. However, I never really saw myself as artistic and had little interest in acting or the graphic arts. It was in high school that I decided that I wanted to be a physicist (like Einstein) after reading several popular books on physics and cosmology. Being so intelligent and not being particularly physically adept, I was naturally seen as a "nerd" and suffered the same sort of social isolation and ridicule that all kids in that position endure. However, I did have several friends and school was not really a bad experience. My main problem was that most of the academic work I did was very easy, and I never really felt I was challenged to my potential. I hardly ever had to study and I often wound up doing homework at the last minute. College and Colorado After evaluating several institutions of higher learning, I applied for and received a scholarship to Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Purdue is an excellent engineering school, although perhaps not the best choice for a degree in physics. However, I had a scholarship, and Purdue was a prestigious name, so off I went to college. A year later I had lost my scholarship and I was no longer sure that I wanted to pursue physics as my major. I struggled academically for a variety of reasons. Part of it was that having had such an easy time at high school and coming from a small town, I was very unprepared for the hard work and studying college necessitated. I was also going from being a big fish in a small pond to being a medium fish in a very big pond. I was competing with students as good as I was, something I never really had to contend with before. I also had a lot of trouble with college-level calculus, a subject that was essential if I was going to continue on in physics. I also wound up spending a lot of time socializing and goofing off in the Society of Physics Students student lounge. I could spend hours there talking with other students about everything under the sun, and this was a social outlet I never really had in high school. Many a physics student at Purdue has had their grades suffer from spending too much time in the lounge, and I fell victim to it just as they did. My brother generously helped pay for my second year at Purdue, but I continued to receive mediocre grades. I was getting excellent marks in my English and philosophy electives, but still having trouble with physics and math. It was also during my second year that I got my first computer account, and I had my first exposure to the Internet. Suddenly computers became a lot more interesting to me, because I discovered that computers could actually talk to each other on a network, all around the world! I taught myself UNIX and computer networking and soon was spending as much time on the computer as I was in the SPS lounge. It was in March of 1990 that I started playing MUDs. MUDs are massively multiplayer online games where dozens of people on the Internet could all meet and interact in a shared virtual text environment. This tied my social interaction with my newfound interest in computers, and I was soon fascinated by the wide array of personalities and friends I could make. MUDing has been responsible for many students flunking out of college, and it is tempting to blame it on my demise as well. But in truth it was not. My academic troubles started long before then, and I only began MUDing late in my second year of college. Moreover, I never really flunked out – I left with something like a B- average – but I would have had to switch majors and I didn’t have the money for a third year of college without a scholarship. In an effort to reduce tuition costs by becoming an in-state resident, I spent a third year at Purdue living off-campus, working minimum wage jobs, and trying to save up to go back to college. But I still had access to the college computers and this gave me even more time to MUD and hone my UNIX skills. I joined the “Vol Group” at the Purdue University Computing Center, a group of student volunteers who helped the systems administration staff on a variety of tasks. I learned how to program in C and shell and got a lot of practical systems administration experience on a variety of operating systems. In November of 1991, having failed to save up enough money to return to college and actually heavily in debt with loans and housing costs, I left Purdue and moved in with my brother and sister-in-law in Colorado Springs, Colorado. I spent 2 years there working at a variety of jobs while doing UNIX consulting for a local ISP and BBS, Old Colorado City Communications. This work history, combined with my college experience, finally gave me the skills I needed to land a job in the heart of the high-tech industry, Silicon Valley. After sending my resume to California-based ISP NETCOM On-Line Communication Services, Inc. and interviewing with them twice over the phone, I was hired, sight unseen, for an entry-level technical support position. I packed up what few belongings I had and moved to San Jose, California. Silicon Valley The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Current Status The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.