In 1995, I took a summer job as an office assistant for my dad's friend's mortgage brokerage. There was a small shop next door which developed casino software and interactive CDs using mTropolis. It was maybe a week or two before I changed jobs. I wasn't working on anything I was proud of, but I was creating art on computers, doing some development, and starting my career.

That summer job basically never ended. The company moved, but the World Wide Web had exploded. Suddenly, everyone had computers. And there was a huge demand for programmers to create web sites, database services, business applications, and digital design. My time had come.

By 1997, I had become a full-time web developer (we said "programmer" back then). In 1998, I joined what we would now call a classic dotcom company--complete with more office than we needed, higher salaries than we deserved, and a string of exotic travel and parties which made no sense for how boring our work was. A company which, as it turned out, was committing some serious securities crimes behind the scenes. As part of the dotcom implosion, our CEO fled the country with all of the company's money, and is probably living like a king in India right now. If he's still alive.