Computers are in my blood. My birth announcements were punch cards, with the holes punched out to spell "It's a Girl". I remember as a kid, getting up in the middle of the night to accompany my dad to a big room filled with spinning magnetic tape and drum disk drives as big as washing machines. I had my first computer-related job at age 18, setting up a mailing list for a local advertising company — on a TRS-80. The following summer I worked in the data processing office of a cowhide-processing plant in North Kansas City (and brought a lovely smell home to my mom every day).

But computers aren't my whole life. I've always had some kind of musical outlet, I'm an avid reader, an occasional crafter, and hardly a day goes by that I don't do some kind of puzzle (crossword or otherwise).