I was born in Washington, D.C. in 1975, and lived in Alexandria, Virginia until the age of 10. I was always fascinated by science, technology, and computers.

When I was 10 years old, we moved to Tokyo; it was 1986. Just to orient you, this was not long after Thriller, and “Back to the Future” came out in 1985. I knew no Japanese beforehand, but began to learn quickly after arriving. We lived in Kakinokizaka (柿の木坂), in Meguro-ku (目黒区), near Toritsu-daigaku station (都立大学). It was a cool place to live for a kid, since there are game centers right by the station, and a supermarket where you could buy fresh, hot o-ban yaki every afternoon (with either bean-paste or cream inside), and the back-streets were usually clear enough of traffic to cruise on my bicycle.

My younger sister Ainsley (3 years my junior) and I went to Nishimachi International School (西町), in Hiroo (広尾), about a 35-minute train ride from home. We walked about 10 minutes to the station every morning, rode the subway, then walked about another 15 minutes or so, up the steep hill from Hiroo station to Nishimachi. After school, I’d usually stop at a corner store to get some instant yakisoba and some bikkuriman (chocolate with collectible playing cards), after which I’d either head home or hang out with friends for a while – there were plenty of things to do. I voraciously read science fiction and anything else on science and technology. I also did a lot more programming, with BASIC and LOGO.

We also had the opportunity to travel extensively. In Japan, we took road trips to Osaka, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Himeji, etc. We also spent time in Korea, China, the Philippines, Australia, India, Kenya, Italy, Germany, Austria, and England. Since then, I've also visited Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, Greece, Peru, Brazil, Egypt, and Turkey. I've been back to Japan many times, but most recently not since 2000.

After 3 years, we moved back to Northern Virginia, near Washington D.C. I had learned fluent Japanese and had absorbed much of the culture and mindset of Japan, so I had a very difficult time adjusting to suburban life. But slowly, I did begin to get used to it again. I attended a public junior high school for a year, continuing my study of Japanese with a tutor, and then entered St. Albans high school in Washington, D.C.

I continued on to Carnegie Mellon University in 1994 to study computer science. Under other circumstances, I might have been one of the lucky few who started at Amazon early and became millionaires. But I’m not really an entrepreneur at heart, and at the time my main interest lay with Artificial Intelligence.

While at CMU I met many of my best friends, and met the girl who became my wife, Yuki. We dated for 3 years there, and were engaged before I graduated. As she was a year my junior, we finally tied the knot in March, 2000, almost 2 years after I graduated. She, I, and my crew of friends made a pasttime of hanging out and enjoying the light rains of Pittsburgh at the Kiva Han near CMU. We learned and practiced Chinese, Japanese, Sanscrit, Arabic, French, sign language, and Lojban. We talked about international politics, superscalar processor design, functional programming, puyo-puyo, and anime. We ate Sree’s indian food for 3 bucks in front of Wean Hall, and smacked each other awake in the clusters at 4:30 AM when we started forgetting what we were actually doing there. Those were the days...

In 1998, I graduated and moved to Denver to begin work for Quark, Inc. developing code for East-Asian typography, then moved on to a startup and contracting work. It was interesting and fun to some extent, but the realities of commercial software development eventually began to wear. It was not what I had expected. In software, it seemed, there was no minimum standard; ironic and sad, since programmers hold themselves to such high personal standards, generally. I worked as an engineer for about 5 years, but finally realized that I needed to make a more fundamental change in direction: I decided to go to law school, looking forward to a career in intellectual property.

I entered George Mason University School of Law in August, 2003. It has been an amazing and harrowing journey, but I’ve gained an incredible amount of both knowledge and wisdom.

In January, 2005 Yuki and I welcomed our son Oliver into the world. He portends a huge new challenge for both of us, but promises to be a beacon of innocent joy in our lives.

My email address is "trevor" at this domain. Please encrypt private information with the key below, using pgp, gpg, or their equivalents.

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(Last Updated May 1, 2005)