What is a kirupa?
by
kirupa | 11 January 2010
If you have any comments, feel free to post them
below.
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If you are on this page, it means that you took a wrong
turn a few miles ago where banner advertisements cleverly disguised as
navigation links led you astray.
Anyway, since you are here after all, there is no point in either of us
not having a good time.
While this page contains nothing of commercial or
practical value, it does contain random
facts about me that you can sneak in during dinner conversations with
your friends and family. I am sure they would appreciate it.
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I am not an
international criminal evading the law, but I certainly
lived like one for most of my life. As you may be able to guess, I was born in India in 1984. I didn't live in India for
very long, for at a very early age my parents and I moved to
Italy where we lived on the island of
Sardinia:
[ I loved swimming in deep water - look
how happy I am ]
After a few years in Italy, my parents and I moved to
Germany. There, I started going to school, was introduced to video
games, fell in love with trains, discovered Nutella, got addicted to
LEGOs, and had a stuffed yellow elephant that I took
everywhere with me:
[ so materialistic...at such a young age too! ]
Germany was fun, but when I was around 7 years old, my parents and I made one
last Passport-requiring move where we relocated to the
United States. I've happily been in the US ever since.
For the most part, my life growing up was quite normal. I did the
usual things kids did - watched a lot of TV, played a lot of
video games, participated in a few sports, discovered the
timeless music of The Bee Gees, and ate a ton of
junk food. While many people may have grown out of some of
these things, I am proud to say that I still actively
maintain these hobbies even today.
At this point, while
the digital version of me was spending countless hours
playing video games, the analog version of
me was doing the whole going to school thing and growing up
in the Southern states of Tennesee and Alabama. Most young
boys had dogs as pets. I had two awesome cats instead, Sugar
and Skippy:
[ awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! ]
Besides school and my computer-related shenanigans, I
partook in the typical Southern activities of learning to
play the piano, taking martial arts (a style called Wado
Ryu), playing golf (competitively even), and being an active
member in the local
4-H club.
In 1998 I started this site, and that started taking up
on inordinate amount of time once I really got into it. Keeping my online mischief separate from real-life got
more difficult once I entered high school. During my
sophomore year, McGraw-Hill noticed that I used FrontPage to
create all of the pages that made up the kirupa.com web
site. After some e-mail conversations, they eventually asked
me to write a book targeted at teaching beginners how to use
FrontPage.
After 6 months of thinking, typing, re-typing, and
consuming countless cans of Pepsi, the final product hit
store shelves and online book retailers in the summer of
2001. The following is an action-shot of the actual book:
Your quest for finding the book may be slightly
complicated because the book went out of print around the
middle of 2003 – the same year I graduated from high school.
A movie based on the book may be in the works, so keep on
the lookout for a gripping historical thriller where 300 div
tags face off against hordes of tables.
During and shortly after the book was written, I had to
partake in the age-honored tradition of applying to colleges
so that I could be a
doctor, a lawyer, or a business
executive. After taking the SAT and ACT exams a billion
times and applying to a handful of colleges, I was accepted
at
MIT in the Boston area. I had nothing better to do for
the next four years, so I figured I'd go check it out.
Life at MIT was fun. I learned to survive extremely cold
weather without flinching, and I also learned how to balance
work with more work:
[ I liked to keep my dorm room clean ]
After four years, I graduated with a degree in Computer
Science. Sad to say, I've forgotten almost everything I
learned there. Happy to say, I met some great people there
who I directly or indirectly spend a lot of time with even
today.
Today, you will find me in the Seattle area
working for Microsoft. While at MIT, I interned at Microsoft
my Junior year and accepted their offer to join full-time to
be a Program Manager on the Expression Blend team after
graduation.
When I am not at work, you'll probably find me indoors
writing bios of myself, playing video games,
painting/sketching, hanging out with friends, watching
movies/tv shows, listening to music, or trolling Facebook.
Last but not least, I am engaged to someone who, despite
knowing all of this about me (and more!), still agreed to
marry me:
[ Roopini and
me! ]
And with that, imagine that a poignant and witty
conclusion was here in the place of the sentence that you
see instead.
If you want to drop in and make a comment, feel free to
do so below. I do read every single one and try to reply if
necessary. Alternatively, you can e-mail me at
kirupa[at]kirupa.com.
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