My family are intense folk. I have one brother, Colin,
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I was born Justin Allyn Hall in Chicago at 12:01pm on December 16, 1974.After I was two, and until I was seventeen, I lived in the same house on the city's North side, near the lake and the State/Division bar scene. I attended Francis Parker, a private school in Lincoln Park, from kindergarden through high school. That was fourteen years. Out of my graduating class, 33 out of 70 had been there that long with me. Some heavy relationships!
four years older than I. We are friends now, but we used to abuse each other something fierce. My mom, dad and step-father were/are lawyers, and very dedicated ones at that. Due to this, I was raised primarily by a series of nannies.
When I was eight, my father, an alcoholic, killed himself. Much of my writing deals with this.
I was raised pretty much without religious background, 'cept for two week summer trips to visit my Grandparents in a town of 640 in North central Nebraska, I attended church with them.
School and I didn't get along so good. Not that I didn't like school or my peers, I just didn't do homework. Tenth grade, I started smoking a lot of pot, listening to Jane's Addiction, I failed sophomore history, biology and math, and I shaved my head.
I found solace in computers. My mom got our first computer, an Apple II+, in 1981, when I was seven. By the time I was fourteen, I was a software salesman at Software, etc.. Through that job, I got into computer consulting, $40 an hour as a fifteen year old to teach secretaries software. This lead to full time jobs administering networks for businesses in Chicago (resume stuff). First was Kanbay (after which I went to Ireland), followed by work at the Boston Consulting Group.I think my Mother marrying George had a lot to do with it - ours was a pretty dramatic clash.
In the fall of '93, I moved outside of Philadelphia to attend Swarthmore College. It was there that I started dating Chandra and started on the web.
The web lead me to work at Wired with Howard and Cyborganic, both in San Francisco, where I was recently arrested.
