After two years of poor academic performance, I figured that the only way to keep from getting thrown out was to do something I was already good at, and switched to music. There I discovered that my poor study habits were more than sufficient to cause failure in that faculty as well. I'd occasionally take courses like Boolean Algebra to raise my GPA a bit. After managing not to pass the same music history course three times running, I was politely asked to leave, and not to come back until I could memorize what Beethoven's favourite food was.

What had kept me from running entirely out of money and hope was the Canadian Naval Reserve. Every summer from 1982 through 1989 I went to sea for training, beginning with receiving the training (and having less than perfect success here as well, taking longer than strictly necessary to master the skills needed) and ending with dispensing it. I earned my Bridge Watchkeeping Ticket and served as Navigation Officer and, lastly, as Executive Officer aboard various Reserve vessels during the summer, and trained at HMCS Tecumseh in Calgary during the winter. I left the Navy as a Lieutenant(N) in 1990.

One thing the Naval Reserve inadvertently gave me was a trick shoulder. During my first summer of training, I got mashed into the wall while playing a violent game of floor hockey, and suffered an anterior inferior dislocation of the shoulder (the ball at the end of my humerus came out of its socket and got jammed against my shoulder blade, making it impossible for me to lower my arm). This put me in hospital overnight, and set the stage for twenty years of further dislocations (including once more during water basketball with the Navy the next summer) while bicycling, playing basketball, taking off a tight shirt, acting overdramatically, playing human curling, and even getting out of bed too fast. This kept me from doing things like diving, which I had really enjoyed when I was younger, until I got accepted into a University research program comparing standard and arthroscopic shoulder surgeries. This put me ahead in the queue for shoulder surgery a good two years, and I had it surgically fixed in November 2003.

The Reserves couldn't keep me entirely safe from reality, however. The year after abandoning my music degree found me living alone and employed as a combination security guard and in-home piano teacher. A few months of this were sufficient to impel me towards the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, where I enrolled in the Cinema, Television, Stage, and Radio Arts program. This period was, paradoxically, quite good for me as a composer. I directed a live radio play, produced another (with all original music), composed and performed music for various films, advertisements, and videos, and got valuable recording experience. But the fates, or perhaps simply the demographics of being a Generation Xer, had other plans for me, and not a single job offer ever came of graduating in 1989 with an honours diploma in Radio Production and a minor in On-Air.

Getting married in 1989 provided some focus and stability. I played a part in a Storybook Theatre production while looking for work, and eventually found a position as office administrator of a small computer network wholesaler. Here I got my first word processing and spreadsheet experience, which was to set me up for what has turned out to be a very computer-related life. I travelled around the world for six months with my spouse in 1991, camping or hostelling from New Zealand to Sweden, before sneaking back to the University of Calgary, doubling up on my missing music history courses, and finally getting a BMus in Composition in 1993, fourteen years after enrolling.

In my spare time, I continued my relationship with Storybook Theatre. They called me in as a replacement male lead less than two weeks prior to opening night for "The Dancing Donkey", and in 1995 I was co-music director of "The Lost Land". I also played the part of "Frog" in "A Year With Frog and Toad", which Storybook presented in December 2006. I was also active at Quickdraw Animation Society as a filmmaker and composer and member of their Board. Late in 2005 I taught a sound design workshop at Quickdraw, and soon afterwards completed music and sound effects for an animated film. I taught an expanded ten-week sound design course at Quickdraw in spring 2007.

I worked for the next five years as a registered music teacher of piano, music theory, and harmony, and as a temporary clerk, mainly for the City of Calgary, which gave me much more computer experience, including introductions to databases, Unix, and WordPerfect. I became so adept at getting WordPerfect to do my work for me that I wrote a workbook to help others do the same, and even wrote a composition to be executed as a WordPerfect macro. As my student base grew, I found that I could make a living teaching at home during the winter while my children were in preschool, only needing to supplement with temp work during the summers. However, the year before my eldest was to start Grade One, I realized that I needed a "Dad Job" - you know, one with a tie, a briefcase, and regular hours, so that my children would have a home to which to come home, instead of a music school.

To that end, I enrolled at the University of Calgary again, this time in the Object Oriented Software Technology program, a six-month crash course in the basics needed to get a job in the industry. I have been employed ever since as a full-time Java programmer, trying to find the time to compose when possible. Catalyzed by my new familiarity with bitwise programming, in 2000 I created a simple addition to standard music notation in order to notate rhythmic values impossible using traditional notation, and this idea has influenced my subsequent compositions, especially my 2005 piece, Engagement. I am currently employed as a software developer for wireless communications products.