Well, I've written a bit about myself before but never anything, "official" so I guess I'll start over from scratch for this. 

Early Life

I was born on January 3rd, 1978 sometime in the afternoon (according to my mom... can't say as I remember) at the Navy hospital in Millington, TN (A suburb of Memphis that exists only because there's a Navy base there.) My parents were married at the time, my mom was a hippie from Memphis and my dad was a Navy man from California... I lived in CA and in GA for a while when I was real little, but my parents were divorced and I was back in Memphis by the time I was three. We lived with my grandparents for a while, but by the time I started elementary school we had our own little apartment on the second floor of somebody's house. It was pretty nice for a single mom and a 6 year old boy, we had 3 bedrooms but only one bathroom (of course being a 6 year old boy, I didn't like baths much) and a nice big yard. We lived a block down the street from my school, St. Anne's elementary. It was a nice little Catholic school attached to a church, probably had 150 students during a busy year. We moved into a house after a couple of years, but we were still just a few blocks from the school so I kept going there, just had a longer walk in the morning. I was baptised a Catholic in the 6th grade, more because it made the tuition cheaper at the school than for any other reason. None of my family was very religious and since I had been taught Catholicism since I started school, I didn't complain. I was always kinda a nerd in school, I didn't hang out with any of the kids. In fact up until the 7th grade I really only had one friend. His name is Michael, he's my mother's best friend's son. He was Catholic too, an altar boy even... we're Godbrothers, since his mom is my Godmother. We grew up together, and since we were both the only child of a single mother, we were raised pretty much as brothers. I still see him sometimes, mostly on holidays... he's in a band, going to college for some sort of music production. We had all sorts of grand times together when we were little, and if you get to know me you'll hear all sorts of stories about him and our antics. Anyway... I was a nerd in school, but I was big and kinda mean, so I was also a little of a bully. I know, those don't seem like compatible qualities, but they are... trust me. Maybe "nerd" isn't the word I want, "outsider" is probably more appropriate.

Adolescence

In the 7th grade I had my first girlfriend, and from there my social life started to take off. Her name was Jennifer Lynn, I'll stick a picture of her on my website somewhere. We dated for 4 whole months, pretty good for a 13 year old's first relationship I think. I dumped her for another girl (I know, go ahead and smack me) and she ended up going out with Michael for something like 2 years. We kinda traded g/f's, actually... he broke up with his g/f of over a year(her name was Dana) about the time I broke up with Jennifer, and after a month or two I ended up with Dana while he was dating Jen. Dana and I broke up after 5 months *sniffle* and then I went on to date most of the girls who had been in Jennifer's grade at her school. Then a few other schools... I was changing g/f's every 2 weeks for a while, I guess that's typical of a 13/14 year old. When I was almost fifteen I started dating a girl named Margaret, and we stayed together for an amazing 10 months. I'll include a picture of her on my website too... by this time I had been expelled from St. Anne's, started school at St. Michael's, been expelled from there too, and ended up a Snowden(one of the better public elementary schools in Memphis) I finished Jr. High there, and then in the tenth grade went back to parochial schools... Memphis Catholic High School, where I just barely managed to avoid being expelled(BARELY, ask me sometime about stripping for my principal and having to see a psychiatrist to stay in school), and ended up graduating from on May 18th, 1996.

A brief sidetrip to mention my credentials as a student. I was captain of the soccer team, co-captain of the football team, and captain of the track team. I was captain of the school's Knowledge Bowl team, a group that competes for $$$ in academic competition against area schools. I was president of Mu Alpha Theta, and a leading member of the science club. I was in all honors classes, and maintained a 3.8 GPA during my time at MCHS. I also did most of the computer work for the school. I missed a couple of questions on the SAT and only got a 1490, though I'm convinced I could've taken it again and scored perfect. I skipped a couple of classes my senior year to go hang out at a college, Christian Brother's University, to take Calculus. Anyway, back to the interesting stuff! :)

The summer between my 8th and 9th grade years, when I was 14, I made a bad mistake. I woke up my mother's b/f when he had a hangover, and he was kinda grouchy. After being knocked around and having my head beat against the corner of a table, I ran away from home. Okay, so I didn't run far... about 3 miles to my grandparents house. Eventually they ended up locking my mom in jail for a bit, and my grandparents got custody of me. I lived with them from the summer of '92 until I was 20. They were very good to me, and I just want to take a moment to tell them how much I love them and appreciate what they did for me *hugs to Mommom and Gramps* High school was a pretty interesting time for me... being pretty smart, keeping up my studies was no problem, so I normally spent my day at school reading a book. No, not a school book. Usually a nice thick novel. I don't like short books, I finish em too quick. On average I'd say that I read three 400 page books a week throughout most of HS. The point to that was to say that since I didn't study or do homework, I had lots of free time. When I was in the 9th grade I started getting in to computers, and since then my spare time has been divided between girls, computers, and books, just about in that order.

Hmm, when I was 15... in the 10th grade, I tended to spend more time dating, and Michael and I drifted apart. When I was 16 I was on the computer playing a game online and some jerk came by and killed me. His name was Brad (The Joker, Valnu, Colonel Zarfleen). We ended up becoming best friends and he was my roommate when I first moved out of my grandparents house... Hmm, I think that covers most of the interesting points during HS, up until I was 18.

I got a scholarship to go to the University of Memphis, paid for everything and then some. Thanks to the cash I won in the Knowledge Bowl I was actually being paid $1300 a semester to go there. I majored in Electrical Engineering for a semester. I had been diagnosed with Migraines when I was 11, and I was having a real bad period at that time. The doctor had me on 6 prescriptions, and I was sleeping 18 hours a day. That's not good for your grades, and I ended up withdrawing.

Career

After I dropped out of college I got a job at ASI doing Customer Service for GE for $6/hour. I was brought on as a temp to handle some extra call volume and when that was over I was laid off. Then I went to CMC doing inbound telemarketing for U.C. Lending for $8/hour. It's hard to believe how many people will call to ask for a home equity loan when they don't even own a house... I worked there with Brad and Becca for about 3 months, then broke up with Becca after we got back from our summer vacation to Florida and decided to just not go back to work there. I was unemployed for a month or so and then got work for IBM fixing laptops for $9/hour. I did that as a temp contractor, supposedly to be hired perm and given a big fat raise after 6 months. Fat chance of that, after 7 months or so and no raise I said to hell with it and quit. I got yet another temp contracting job at Stream doing tech support for AST computers, but after 2 weeks of training they decided that through some paperwork glitch I had been hired under the wrong temp agency, and so they couldn't keep me and I got fired with the excuse that I had never been hired in the first place. It wasn't so bad, though, they gave me free A+ training. Luckily for me, I got a call the next day from yet ANOTHER temp service, and landed a job at a contracting company that was supplying people to a consulting company that was hired by Microsoft to do consulting work for the Baptist Memorial Hospital system for $14/hour. During that job one of the MS project managers offered us a free lunch for passing MS certification exams. That started a fierce competition and several of us managed to rack up a few free lunches each, by the time I quit that job I was one test away from my MCSE. Then I went to work for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers doing all sorts of computer support work, requiring Secret security clearance, for $41,000/year. Finished my MCSE there, then got fired for no obvious reason. They said they had had anonymous complaints about me. I spent a good while unemployed after that, as it turned out later my email was messed up by an ISP merger and I wasn't receiving any of the responses to the resumes I sent out. After that problem was fixed I got a job within a week at Sitel Corp. as Senior Pc/LAN Systems tech and general IT Manager making $45,000/year. After I had been there awhile they sent me to another site in Texas to do some work for the guys down there, and when I got back I was fired for the computers breaking down while I was gone... that never did make much sense to me. I had gotten to the point where making the money my qualifications deserved was difficult in Memphis, it took me 6 weeks to find another job and that was just a 2 month consulting deal as Project Leader for a team deploying new computers to Schering-Plough. It was a great job, making $25/hour with lots of overtime and we even got 2 weeks of paid vacation in the middle of the project because the client couldn't keep up with us. As Project Leader I got to pick the other 2 people to hire for the team and I had gotten one of the best guys I worked with on the Baptist project so we were cranking out new PC's faster than they could order them :) After that engagement ended (we worked ourselves out of a job in barely half the time they had scheduled for the project, got a nice bonus for that) I looked around for another job and finally ran out of viable options in Memphis. I took a position with HSO Business Systems outside Washington, DC, and moved up to Northern Virginia. $60,000 a year and great benefits made the move more than worth it. That was a nice cushy job, I was managing all the computer stuff for a company of about 400 people... but my brain turned to mush from not using half my knowledge and the company was going bankrupt from idiot executives, so I found a new job and got out of there after just over a year.  My next job was with Alantris Corp based out of Boston. A little 5 man operation (I made 6) they had just opened an office in NVA to support a big client down there, and hired me as a Senior Engineer to help out with that client and work on other opportunities as they arise. I started there in Sept. of 2000.  $70,000 a year, 3 weeks vacation, and I got to work from home and make my own hours most of the time.  By March two of the employees had quit.  That left the owner who didn't do any work, his secretary who just did payroll, an engineer in Boston and me as the engineer in VA.  Pete, the owner, was so determined to change his business model so he could make more money that he neglected sales and over billed the one big client he had. They eventually got fed up with it and refused to pay him, so I got laid off and eventually moved back to Memphis.  I worked for 2 days at a hospital in Jonesboro, AR, an 85 mile one way drive.  I evaluated their situation and apparently they decided it was too much work to properly implement what they wanted, so they scrapped the project and I was out of work again.  Two days later I had a job working for Service Assurance Corp in Memphis as a Field Engineer.  I drove around town answering trouble calls and doing pre-sales work for a bunch of companies that were big enough to have computers but too small to afford a full time IT staff.  The job was okay, but the company was run by a @#*@#!$&*@#!&@#$*%&@ who ripped off anyone and everyone he could.  They bought parts to sell to customers and some of them would sit in the warehouse for 3 years and then they'd sell them for full retail price from 3 years back.  I watched them sell an 8 meg PCI video card for $99 when the going rate was $50 for a 64 meg Geforce2.  The owner drove a Porsche and a Hummer and a Jaguar XKR, but I got laid off cause he wasn't making enough money.

Becoming a Landowner!

I bought a house in Memphis back in October of 1998, right after I started working for CST. It's in the Raleigh/Bartlett area of Memphis. There'll be pictures of it on my webpage. I paid $95,000 for it, it's appraised at $122,000, so I'm happy.  4 bedrooms, 2.5 bath, living room, dining room, kitchen, den, and office. Big backyard with a fishpond and deck, lots of trees and flowers. As it turns out, updating this after a loooooong time, it wasn't as great a deal as I thought. Not long after I originally wrote this website I had to replace the water heater, the air conditioner, and half the roof of the house. Not to mention needing extensive landscaping in the yard to stop constant flooding of the downstairs area every time it rained hard. Since I moved to Virginia I've been renting out the house to a succession of people, including my cousin and an ex-g/f. If anyone in Memphis is in need of a place to stay, send me an email :) When I first moved up here I stayed in Selma, a hundred year old mansion on 200 acres in the middle of nowhere out past Leesburg that HSO owned. I moved in with a guy in Herndon not long after that, but he ended up having mental problems and I moved out after a short while. He committed suicide a week after I left. I leased an apartment in Centreville, VA for a year. The rent was more for that 2bed/2bath 900 square foot place than I was paying for the house in Tennessee! When that lease was up I moved into a "luxury" apartment in Herndon, VA. 2bed/bath still, but 1300 square feet and a loft to put my computers in. It has skylights and a gas fireplace, but is way up high on the fourth floor and doesn't have an elevator. Moving in sucked. It's good for my legs, I guess.  I moved back to Memphis in August of '01, two years after I left.  I hired people to carry the stuff downstairs that time and load the truck.  http://www.upack.com is a good service.  It's cheaper than Uhaul to start with, you don't have to pay for gas, and you don't have to drive a slow, noisy, uncomfortable truck across country.  You just load their trailer and they haul it to wherever you're going and you unload.  It cost me over $500 to pay the 3 guys who carried my stuff downstairs and loaded the truck in VA.  In Memphis it was $80 for two guys for two hours.  Much cheaper down here.  Though they raised taxes again, and reappraised my house.  My mortgage payment has increased by $120 in four years... and it's a fixed rate loan...  

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles...

Okay, so it's just about cars. I started out borrowing my grandparent's cars. My grandfather had a Ford minivan and my grandmother had a little Chevy Cavalier station wagon, and they had a spare full-size van, so there was usually something for me to drive. By my senior year in HS they bought me my own car, a Chevy Celebrity 4 door, not very exciting but it got me around town. After I dropped out of college and while I was working at CMC I managed to ram that car into a retaining wall when some crackhead in a stolen car ran me off the road. With my grandparent's help I bought a 1994 Dodge Spirit. It was used, of course, but it was pretty nice. I drove that for awhile until eventually I decided that even though I'd never had a problem with it, I had enough money coming in to get something nicer, so I traded it in during May of 99, shopped around for awhile and finally settled on a 1999 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP Widetrack. It's metallic bronze, leather interior, sunroof, CD player, power everything, supercharged V6 engine pumping out 240 horsepower. Comfortable as my couch and it drives like a dream. I had it for almost 50,000 miles and it's still an awesome car, never had a problem and I miss it.  It was financed for 3 years with a balloon payment at the end.  Just before the end of the financing I sold it to my ex girlfriend for what I still owed on it, plus she gave me her '95 Grand Am as well.  It was a POS with 125K miles on it but I traded it in for a '99 Grand Am GT Coupe with only 30K miles.  It's not as nice as the GTP but it'll be paid off in a year or 18 months at most and then it'll be a good trade in on something really cool.  I'm thinking a new Chrysler 300M or maybe a used Jaguar XKR or Corvette.

Thoughts on Life

This is the section that's really about ME, and not about what I've hoarded over the years. It's also the part that most people will want to argue about and it's likely to generate a good amount of conversation :) So that I have interesting things to say later, I won't go in depth here. I'm registered to vote in VA, but I never have bothered. I'm probably leaning towards being a Republican mostly because you can't be a rich Democrat without being a hypocrite, and I have every intention of being wealthy. *waits for the screams from the Democratically minded to fade* I have no problem with abortion, but since I'll never be in a position to get one myself I don't see how my opinion should matter... do what you want. Abortions are only morally wrong if you're convinced that human beings have a soul and that the soul enters the body at the moment of conception. While I agree that a person is made up of more than the physical manifestation of matter, I don't think that a single fertilized egg has a soul. I dunno exactly when the turnover point is, but I'm inclined to say that it's around the same time that a baby can survive outside the womb without artificial aid. I firmly believe in capital punishment. An eye for an eye makes perfect sense to me. Also, being Christian, I believe in rewards after death for the Good and punishment after death for the Evil. Based on that belief, how can capital punishment be wrong? If you're executing an innocent then you're sending them to eternal paradise, if you're executing a criminal then they'll be given the appropriate punishment by an all-knowing being who is much more capable of handing out justice than any human court. I don't like welfare. If you're unable to support yourself then you're either too lazy to do it, sick, or incompetent. If you're incompetent there are plenty of ways to learn and improve yourself, unless you're lazy. If you're lazy, I have absolutely no sympathy for you and don't believe that my hard work should pay for your way through life. If you're sick, okay, I don't mind helping. I don't like taxes, but I don't really hate them either. Despite the probably $40,000 a year of my income that goes to taxes I still have enough left over for necessities and plenty of frivolous fun :) My radios are set to Country and Rock stations, I've been to once concert in the last 10 years, Guns and Roses when I was 13. I went to a bar once, a few years ago, to play pool... I don't have anything against drinking, and I've been known to down some liqour from time to time, but I don't like beer and I've never drunk enough alcohol to be hungover in the morning. I don't like smoke. It stinks and it's dirty. I usually avoid places where people are smoking and, by necessity, the people who're doing it. People with hobbies that are as close to suicidal as smoking disturb me... I recently discovered that I like Indian food, lamb saagwala and palak paneer, yummy. Italian is great, and Chinese and Mexican are good most of the time too. I survived 6 months off nothing but pizza and hot wings and italian subs once. I found a nice restaurant in Reston that serves Indian, Thai, Mexican, and Caribbean food, it's amazing.  After my girlfriend left me and moved back in with her parents in May of 2002 I thought about it for awhile and then decided to replace her with someone more loving. So I got a dog.  He has his own section of the webpage so I won't go into detail here.  I'll just say that he's a much better companion than she was.  I think anyone who lives alone should get a dog or at least a cat.

Thanks for listening,

Jacob Springer

06/18/2002 02:35 PM

From now on any updates will go down here instead of me rewriting each section.

 Learn more at Home Page of Jacob Springer