Classical Jazz 2005: Home

Who am I?

Matthew Lewis Carroll SmithMy name is Matthew Lewis Carroll Smith and my friends call me Matthew. Lewis is my middle name. Carroll is a family name; thus my father's name is Wilbur Richard Carroll Smith, and my grandfather's name is Ambrose Everett Carroll Smith. As far as the name crap-shoot goes, I got off lucky.

If you ask, "Are you related to Lewis Carroll who wrote Alice in Wonderland?" then you haven't read the above paragraph very carefully. Believe it or not, people have asked.

I am (painfully) white. I do not tan at all, which probably has something to do with why my skin is in such good condition. People often think I am 10 years younger than I really am, which is fine by me. My father's family is mostly of Germanic and Irish descent, with one branch going back to pre-Revolutionary War Maryland. Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who signed the Declaration of Independence, is my great-to-the-nth granduncle. My mother's family is not-too-recent Scotch descent (the infamous Broady clan) which has produced some notable con-men and used car salesmen.

I was born in Columbus, Indiana on May 12, 1960. I have somewhat reluctantly spent most of my life in Memphis, Tennessee. I am 6 foot, 2 inches tall and weigh 250 pounds. I used to have wonderful long blonde hair, but when I turned 40 it quit growing. (*cry*) I should be thankful for small miracles, my hair is receding from the front and not the back. I have blue eyes which sometimes turn gray or green. I wear glasses because I am nearsighted in one eye and far-sighted in the other. My eyesight problem are further complicated by the fact that I need bifocals. I can get by without wearing my glasses but I have to alternately open and close each eye at such a rate that people often think I am signaling them in Morse code. Sometimes for fun I let other people put on my glasses and laugh as they quickly become ill.

I like to dress up and wear snappy clothes, but when I don't I look pretty rumpled. It seems there is no gray area with me and my clothes. My style is anchored somewhere in the 80s, which I don't think is all that bad. (For those of you playing at home, it means small lapels and thin ties.) My parents were from the 60s and 70s, and I still have nightmares about bell-bottom jeans. My father still wears them... with brightly colored suspenders!

I am a pretty smart guy and it becomes obvious when I open my mouth. The only way I was able to squeak through English in school was by excelling on the vocabulary exams, and it stuck with me. I also found out very early in life that the best way to irritate adults is to use words they don't understand. During my early childhood my parents indulged me with any book I wanted and I took advantage of it. Scientists now know that this is the way you grow your child into a nerd. I was well on my way.

School bored me to tears and I quickly became a problem child. This was in the days before it was common to prescribe various chemicals to control children's behavior. My parents just learned to deal with it. Finally, after intense psychotherapy sessions, my parents found out that I was acting antisocial because I was bored in school. They quickly moved me into more progressive schools. The combination of a demanding curriculum and peer pressure straightened me out. Mostly.

My college years were a haze of drugs, sex, and loud music. Somewhere in there I did learn something. I learned that college really wasn't about learning - it was about filling out forms. Despite changing my major numerous times, I never could find a course of study that suited me. Programming looked interesting, but I was quickly turned off by curriculums that were focused on learning to operate the hardware (punch card writers and readers, spool tape systems, and disk platters) and learning dead programming languages (PL/1, Metasymbol, Algol-68, SNOBOL, and RPG).

I kicked around in my 20s (the 80s) doing nothing in particular except acquiring a number of strange skills and teaching myself useful programming languages. I was very frustrated that there wasn't a job out there that was suited for me. What I didn't know was that the job I wanted hadn't been invented yet.

In my 30s (the 90s) I learned to do the whole workaholic thing. At the time it was a good disabillity to have, because I had started my own software company, Baseline Publishing. I'd lay awake nights worrying about the way letters were kerned on the packaging or what kind of presence we were going to have at a trade show. I never worried about the programers - they were the least of my problems.

When the world wide web caught people's attentions I was already there building my own web pages. I'll never forget 1996, though; I must of told 1,000 people I was trying to sell web sites to that the web was going to be big business. I think only 20 believed me. Every once in a while I look up one of the 980 others and laugh and point at them.

Right now I'm doing pretty well. The internet/software industry suits me fine. The hours are good and I get paid to come up with clever hacks and tell people where their user interfaces are fubared. It seems I have a talent for organizational design and process flow. I have been pushing hard on that entrepreneurial rock for 12 years now. Despite the tolls that work took on my social life, I did manage to catch a particular female and marry her. Actually, it's a funny story.

In 1997 I was using an online dating service to find victims potential mates. I had developed a routine to filter out the undesirables. Despite the road blocks I put up, this one woman named "Paniscus" contacted me. We exchanged a few emails, but we failed to click and I let the conversation die.

Two years later I had changed my dating service, only to discover she had moved to the same service, as well. I sent her a message just to say hello and we started talking again. Since we had already covered the basics, we decide to try a test date. At first, she wanted me to come visit her at work. When I found out she worked at the mogue - at night - I balked. I wanted a venue that was on neutral ground. She tried very hard to persuade me but I was adamant. Eventually, we agreed on a local bar for our rendezvous.

As soon as I met her I knew she was someone special. Plus, I finally got find out what her real name was: Pamela Pearson. She was sarcastic and acerbic, which really turned me on. Soon we seeing each other as often as we could. I even came to like the morgue - as long as the moon wasn't full.

Eventually, Pamela introduced me to her son, Joshua. While I am usually nervous around children of women I'm dating, Joshua was so full of love and energy that we became fast friends right away. From that point on it was just a question of how long it would take for me to pop the question. It didn't take long, I asked Pamela to marry me as soon as I scraped up the money for the engagement ring. On May 6, 2001, at the judge's home, we were united in holy matrimony. At the tender age of 41 I had finally become hitched.

So far it has been great! One of the best things is that I have someone to play Xbox games with.

If you are still fascinated by who I am, then I suggest you find out When did I sleep? which has some more details of my life.

Otherwise, if there is a particular fact about me that I haven't addressed, then I suggest you email me:.

 

 

 

 

 

it pays the bills dept

here is something I hope is doing no evil.

could be worse dept

there could be more of them