William Sherwood Truman (not his real name) was born in the mid-to-late 70’s. Born in the south on the east coast and leaving the state of Vandalia when I was four, I was raised in the suburbs of Colosse, Deltona with my two older brothers. My father was a civilian auditor working for the United States Air Force, performing cost analyses on airplane engineering designs. My mother was president of the PTA, a tireless volunteer, and homemaker.
I went to an upper middle class high school chalk full of the sons and daughters of engineers. The average student’s car at my High School was worth twice that of the average teacher’s. Both of my parents grew up dirt poor so what money we had was spent only with great trepidation, but thankfully we were never left wanting. Even so, I never had the nicest clothes and sometimes I’d have to take an extra set of clothes because my car frequently lacked air conditioning to protect me from the hot southern sun. I owe my disdain for conspicuous consumption to how I was raised.
When I graduated from high school I enrolled at Southern Tech University because of their College of Industrial Technology, which offered programs many larger and more prestigious universities did not. I majored in Computer Information Systems (CIS) and minored in Institutional Supervision. Shortly before starting at SoTech, I met and began a serious relationship with a girl named Julie Bernard. My relationship with Julie was unusually stable for our age and, with the exception of my senior year, denied me the “college experience” and the nigh-certain insanity that probably would have come with it. I don’t regret my time with Julie, though looking back I would have bailed out a lot earlier than I did.
In addition to a full-time courseload and a full-time girlfriend, for a long stretch I also had a full time at a computer reseller named Orion Technologies. I served as a “y2K Coordinator”, wherein my job was to give my employer an insurance discount for having someone dedicated to coordinating Y2K issues, and as a Night Operator, where my job was to avoid falling asleep while performing system backups and batch processes at night. Eventually Orion sold off their computer division and sales division, leaving me wondering what exactly it is that the company did. I was laid off before I found out.
The local economy had hit the skids and finding work was difficult. Lacking work, finding a girlfriend proved pretty hard, too. The first problem was settled when a SoTech alum hired me to be the solo IT person for Wildcat, his small oil refinery products engineering and manufacturing company. The second problem was alleviated, though not solved, by Evangeline Pierce. Eva brought me out of an increasing despondency and into a whirlwind of fury, hurt, and confusion. We parted for the third and final time three years later, by which point I had lost the job at Wildcat.
Unemployed and somewhat bitter, it’s amazing that I met and became involved in Clancy Himmelreich, a soon-to-graduate medical student, at all. We quickly partnered up and the prospect of marriage was almost immediately discussed. During this time I worked briefly for a company called Bregna, infamous in the Colosse area as the worst employer in town.
Clancy and I got married and moved to the Mormon-dominated western state of Deseret, where she began her residency. After a series of part-time and temporary jobs, I began work for the Falstaff Corporation, which handles administrative chores for companies too small or too cheap to handle their on HR matters. It was working for that bizarre company that inspired me to start a pseudononymous blog and start writing about it. In August 2006 we relocated to the southwestern state of Estacado, where we spent a couple of years. Clancy delivered high-risk babies into the world while I made sure that computer software and hardware works correctly. For six months or so Clancy worked out west and we lived 1,000 miles or so apart three weeks of every month.
In July of 2008 we relocated again to the Pacific northwestern state Cascadia so that Clancy could finish her extensive training. Rather quickly after the move, I got a job at Mindstorm, one of the larger and more well-known software companies out there. The job was good, the food was better, but the 3-hour commute was unbearable. Our job contracts ended on the same day and we were unemployed bums for several months before Clancy finally accepted a position in Callie, Arapaho (pronounced Ah-RAWP-ah-hoe). We relocated in March of 2010. I worked for a time as a courier for the Census Bureau and later as a substitute teacher. Our daughter Lain was born in 2012 and since then I have become a stay-at-home dad.
I have two older brothers. My older brother Oliver (or Ollie) is a database programmer living down the street from my parents with his wife Kelsey, daughter Sadie, and newborn son Roy. Mitch, the middle brother, is an aeronautical engineer and also lives in the Mayne area with his wife Brynn.
Clancy has two younger sisters, one of which (Ellie, the middle daughter) is currently living in the Northwest Territories of Canada as an environmental legal analyst and the other (Zoey, the younger daughter) works as a financial analyst for the federal government..
{Most recently edited on 2/4/15}
Hi there. I read your blog almost daily and always enjoy your posts, especially your baby and the dog.
I notice you like Lenovo Thinkpads and post on them. I am hoping you can give me some advice. The lid on my 2006 R60 is twisting off the hinges and screws, and the computer technician I consulted says it can’t be fixed. Do you have any recommendations for a good replacement from the current models?
I really just use my laptop to email, write, surf the Web and, most importantly, log in my company’s virtual desktop so I can work from home. I know you had a bad experience with a recent Thinkpad and of course there was the scandal about bloatware earlier this year. I really liked my Thinkpad, so I would love to get another one but maybe it’s not a good option anymore.
Any suggestions you have would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Foose
Foose, hi! I answered in a separate post.