Kenny's Bio

I was born and raised in Palm Springs, CA, where my roots run back five generations. In 1902 my Great-Great Grandfather, William L. Paul first heard about the Coachella Valley while he was living in Chicago. He later visited an experimental date garden sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and purchased a quarter section of raw desert sand and scrub, intent on starting a date farm. In June of 1909 he moved his family to the desert. W.L. Paul played a key role in launching the valley's Date Industry. His daughter, Nina Paul Shumway published a book in 1960 titled, "Your Desert and Mine" that chronicles the development of valley during those rough early years. Now I live in Fremont, CA, in the bay area. If you have to live in suburbia, Fremont is a pretty cool place. It is an extremely diverse community that is very well integrated.

Spending time with my family is by far the most important thing in my life. I'm very happily married to my wonderful wife Jill. I have two children, Tristan and Jillian, from my previous marriage and two stepdaughters, Amy and Sarah and of course the world's greatest dog. I love doing projects around the house and working in the garden with Jill than just about anything else in the world.

The things in life that I am most proud of are that I am able to provide for the needs of the family and that I have continued to maintain a bi-weekly visitation schedule with Tristan and Jillian for over 6 years now, even though the kids live 500 miles away. Either I will fly down there for the weekend and take the kids to my Mom and Dad's Ranchlette near Palm Springs, or the kids fly up here.

I've been working at Cisco Systems in San Jose, CA, for over 7 years. Currently I am the manager of the company's Corporate Defect Tracking Organization. My team provides the bug tracking applications used by Cisco's engineering and technical support teams around the globe. I love Cisco. It is a great place to work!

Much of my earlier existence was spent pursuing my hobby of customized mini-trucks. For a while during this time I was a columnist for Truckin' and Mini-Truckin' magazines and I started the first mini-truck mailing list on the net. I'm no longer active in the sport, but I do keep a few legacy mini-truck web pages around.

Besides the mini-truck stuff, you may come across my name associated with ancient archives of the talk.bizarre news group. Back in the early eighties when I was getting started in the high tech industry, I'd write volumes of truly pointless drivel to pass the endless hours I had to spend late at night watching backup tapes spin. There was a long list of those similarly afflicted.

Currently my hobbies are playing with Legos, following the NASCAR Winston Cup Series (GO RUSTY!) and tinkering around with my home network which I seem to be constantly rebuilding. On occasion I've been known to write Inspirational Haiku, and stories that I eventually hope to publish. I'm also an avid fan of the Star Wars Universe.