I was born February 10th, 1976 in Los Angeles California and lived in the same house in Beverly Hills until I started college, at which time I became a vagrant. I have two parents, a brother, and a sister. I have a grandmother, too. At some point, we also had a dog that never ceased to annoy me. (As you can tell, I'm quite fond of animals.) My father is a doctor of obstetrics and gynecology, and my mother helps him out at the office, attempts to keep things at home running at some reasonable approximation of smoothness, and does a bit of substitute teaching on the side. My brother has a law degree from Pepperdine and is theoretically a lawyer, but he doesn't have a full-time job in that field as of this writing. He's helping out with family matters and doing a little freelance work. My sister is a first-year law student at Yale. Every member of my immediate family except me has a Bachelor's degree from UCLA, so I've pretty much been ingrained with a hatred of USC.

My first two years of schooling were at Temple Emmanuel Nursery School. I still have friends from those years! (A few of us attended school together all the way through high school.) Back then, I was actually considered a prodigy. (At some point in the next few years, that distinction would be removed. I'm not sure precisely when that transpired.) I remember several things from nursery school fairly well. Among them were lip-synching when my teachers made us sing (mostly religious songs, although I don't remember if they were hard core), starting a crystal collection with some cheap trinkets one of my teachers gave me, playing in the simplistic equipment in the school yard (and eavesdropping on the conversations of others), learning how to play chess {yes, I really did learn how to play at age 3}, and reading as much as I could about dinosaurs. I "graduated" from nursery school in 1981 (a year in which the Dodgers---my team!---won the World Series). We even had a small ceremony in which we were given diplomas!

After nursery school, I attended Hawthorne Elementary School (named after You-know-whom) from Kindergarden through 8th grade. People picked on me a lot beginning in Kindergarden, and nobody had done that in nursery school. (Some things haven't changed. At least it's good-natured now, because back then it wasn't. Kids can be really harsh!) I was still considered a prodigy back then. I remember learning how to multiply while everybody else was still learning addition. (I wish things were still so simple!) I was quickly identified by my teachers as somebody who was mentally unstable or perhaps just socially underdeveloped, and the school administrators had me attend some special classes in the middle of the school day a couple times a week. It's amazing how quickly people identify these things. (If you're somebody who knows me, then you of course recognize how correct those people were!) As you can tell, this hasn't affected my self-confidence in the least... (I'm not insecure, I swear...)

It was during my elementary school years that I really got interested in both computers and patterns. In nursery school, I played some arcade games and console games on my brother's Atari 2600. I also started following baseball around the same time. (Several of my interests and beliefs developed rather early!) I became interested in computers per se when I was introduced to LOGO in second grade. I enjoyed the fact that I could produce interesting patterns with it. (I didn't realize it then, but this was my first observation of quasiperiodic behavior. The first time I played Asteroids was my introduction to a torus as a configuration space, although again I didn't realize this at the time.) I played around with Apple II's a lot and cracked a handful of games so that they could be pirated. (I played a fairly sizeable role in a pirating operation out of my elementary school's computer lab for a couple years.) The first computer my family owned was the original 128K Macintosh, which we bought at its inception. It seemed so powerful when it first came out in 1984. Using a mouse was a revelation! In addition to playing games (especially ones like Pinball Construction Set and Loadrunner, in which I could make my own levels), I spent lots of time messing around with programs like MacPaint and ResEdit. With the latter, I crashed our computer lots of times. It's a good thing that we didn't have a hard drive back then, because with the older versions of ResEdit, one could easily take the system software down with a single crash.

Other things I did in elementary school included playing tetherball and handball and exposing myself to as much baseball as possible. In the early 1980's I began collecting baseball cards, and beginning in 1988 (another year in which the Dodgers won the World Series...a truly magical season!) until I started college, I collected even more heavily. I still collect a little bit, but the extent to which I do now is greatly inhibited by time, money, and alternate interests. I briefly collected old coins, but I didn't get into that too much. Throughout elementary school, people picked on me. Sometimes it was as if my name were 'nerd' rather than Mason. In high school, most of the people who did that found better things to do, like drugs. I'm just glad I was rational enough not to flip my lid and do something like what happens seemingly every week nowadays. There were certainly times when I wanted to do it! Thankfully, I realized that I'd be screwing myself over in the process, and I had no desire to do that. My family's issues reached their peak during my elementary school years, and this also contributed to warping me. (When I consider what I've been through, I think I am actually significantly less screwed-up than I could have been---as hard as that may be to believe.)

Some students in our school district were invited to be in a "Gate Program," which had extra sessions so that people could learn more advanced things. I elected not to participate, because I didn't want to lose any time on weekends, get up earlier in the morning, or stay later at school in order to do it! (This contrasts markedly with how I am now when it comes to supplementary learning.) When I was really young, I used to get up early to watch shows like Land of the Lost and Saturday morning cartoons. I eventually learned my lesson: Never get up earlier than necessary!

I graduated from Hawthorne School in June 1990, and began taking classes at Beverly Hills High School in the Fall. (I started taking a class in the summer of 1990, but it was boring, so I dropped it.) One of my friends got me interested in Dungeons and Dragons that summer. I had always enjoyed certain computer role-playing games (prinicipally, the Ultima series and some of the Infocom text adventures), but I had never before played a paper-and-pencil RPG or read the associated novels. I've been hooked on that stuff ever since, even though my interests continue to expand.

High school classes were very boring, but I somehow managed to augment my aesthetic interest in patterns with a mathematical one. Some of my teachers were nice and let me work on other things in lieu of paying attention in class. An incident in freshman geometry was one such example. On a test, we were supposed to use compass constructions to make things such as parallel lines and perpendicular lines. I had forgotten the steps to make the former and attempted to rediscover how to do it during the exam. It turns out that I accidently found a better construction algorithm than the teacher had presented in class. She spent half an hour grading that problem on my test before figuring out that what I did was correct. She realized that what I had submitted was a guess, but she told me I could get full credit if I proved the validity of my method. I spent the next three class periods working on that proof before I finally figured it out. It was too late to claim my points, but I think I learned more in those three periods than I would have otherwise. Most teachers didn't allow such things, but I really appreciate the ones who did.

Other things I did in high school included participating in Academic Decathlon, Science Olympiads, various other science competitions, and a Rotisserie baseball league. I tried out for the baseball team twice, but I sucked too much to make the team. I learned how to drive, although I was apathetic about it. I earned my license the summer following my senior year. I passed the written test to be eligible for the driving test four times. (One had to retake it each year.) Two things ultimately motivated me to prepare and take the road test: I was sick both of my mother nagging me and of paying ten dollars each year to renew my learner's permit. I have not driven a single time since I got my license. (The person from the driving school who gave me a lesson the day before the test admitted afterwards that he thought I wouldn't pass.) I was permitted, however, to renew my driver's license by mail because of my perfect driving record, which just shows how crappy the whole system is.

I started my freshman year at Caltech in September, 1994 and was soon initiated as a member of Lloyd House. I was what was known as a "throaty" frosh. ('Throat' is short for 'cutthroat.' The term is applied to undergrads at Tech who study a lot.) Even though frosh at Tech were on Pass/Fail then (now only the first 2 terms are on P/F), I felt it was better to study a lot so that I could learn the material for subsequent years (during which I would earn grades). I occasionally received flack from upperclassmen and fellow frosh for doing this, as they applied pressure to use Pass/Fail as an excuse not to work. I was quite vocal about my opinions on the matter, and some people didn't appreciate it. I have a lot of fond memories from frosh year as well as a few not-so-fond ones. There were lots of amusing incidents both in-class and out-of-class. I also experienced Ditch Day for the first time and witnessed lots of pranks--I also particpated in a few. Early in the year, a few people and I melded into a group of friends who remain close to this day. We are now known as The Usual Bastards. We added a couple people in subsequent years, but most of us met freshman year.

Other highlights of my freshman year were playing lots of pool (which I had determined long before I would play a lot the first time I had regular access to pool equipment), taking Caltech's ping pong class twice, writing for The Tech, and editing The Tech. Our editorial team received lots of criticism--it was a thankless job. However, we did pull a lot of neat stunts: the animal cruelty issue, the giant screw, the Future Farmers of America advertisements, the dog-ear quotes, and a multitude of other antics. Though there were plenty of late nights and there was a lot of criticism, I'm glad I spent a year as one of the Tech Editors. That said, if I were given that decision to do over, I would not have become an editor. The unconstructive, harsh criticism irked me at the time, and the time-consumption and stress induced by The Tech were not exactly welcome additions to my life.

The antics at Caltech started frosh year. My first night there--rotating out of Page House--I remember some people lining the halls with magnetic tape at 5am for reasons I didn't understand. I never did figure out what they were doing. Another thing I remember is walking through Valhalla in Lloyd House, being told to duck, and doing so before I had a chance to think about it as something whizzed by just over my head. (It was some sort of arrow from a home-made bow and arrow.) This basically cemented the impression of Caltech I got from watching Real Genius, an excellent movie which is based on undergraduate life at Caltech.

The long version above will eventually be continued, but (for now) here's the short version of the story (beginning with my Caltech years):