Interlude - Index of

chapter zero
I am the product of a tryst in a squalid Times Square flophouse
and was raised by a brothel owner and his opium-using
wife. I am a high school dropout who started college at fourteen.
My youth was spent hitchhiking and cutting the testicles
off bulls. I sold my blood for money. I am an ordained minister
and an atheist. I once ate dog meat and the still-beating heart
of a snake. I made a billion dollars and I lost a billion dollars.
I am presently employed as a shaman.
Or . . . I can say that I am the son of comfortable and educated
middle-class parents. My father was an aerospace engineer
while my mother took care of the three children. I went
to college and studied to become an engineer like my father. I
earned a computer science degree from Princeton in 1986 and
headed off to Silicon Valley to write software. In 1992 I joined
two colleagues to start a data storage firm called NetApp, where
I still work today.
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