Biography

• Born: July 8, 1977 in Salt Lake City, UT
• Died: July 8, 2177 on Mars
• Claimed Hometown: Austin, TX
• Current Residence: San Jose, CA
• Other Places I've lived: Washington, D.C. (actually, Manassas, VA), Utah, Syndey, Australia, Grafton, Australia, and Brisbane, Australia
• Occupation:Patent Attorney
• Past Occupations: Technical Writer & Software Developer
• Gender: Male
• Height: 6'1"
• Weight: 185 lbs. (ideally, with a time machine)
• Eye color: Blue
• Donor: Yes
• Marital Status: Very Happily Married
• Wife's Name: Angela
• Sons' Names: Thomas and Jonah
• Daughter's Names: Baby Girl Rees (aka "Baby Cereal")
• Where I Was When They Shot JFK: You mean the movie, right?
• One Thing I'm Doing Now That, 10 Years Ago, I Didn't Think I'd Be Doing Now: Cycling to work two times a week.
• List of Places I've yet to See Before I Die: Nome, Alaska; Antarctica; Ankor Wat; Iceland; South Africa; Alice Springs, Australia; Tazmania; Greenland

I'm married to a beautiful woman named Angela. We have two sons (Thomas and Jonah) and one daughter (unnamed at the time of writing). I love spending time with them more than anything in the world. We live in a fixer-upper that after three years is almost fixed. Among the many things we love to do together are hiking, camping, traveling, watching Texas Rangers' baseball, singing, and playing games. We keep a website together at http://karlandangela.reeshome.org.

I come from a family of eight--two parents, two brothers, and three sisters. My siblings are spread throughout the country in an almost mirroring pattern centered on the town where we grew up--Austin, Texas.

After graduating high school (Pflugerville, TX) in 1995, I enrolled at Brigham Young University. Originally, I wanted to be a writer, and thus concentrated on an English degree). However, since I'm practical (and geeky) I also finished with a degree in Computer Science. After taking enough courses to graduate me three times over, I finished my double major in 2001 with University Honors.

I earned a J.D. at the J. Reuben Clark Law School at BYU in 2007. I focused on Intellectual Property, Antitrust, and Telecommunications. I didn't even know that I wanted to study law until, the year before I started law school, I took the LSAT on a whim and aced it. But then I looked at people who have really cool jobs or who I really respected, and most of them had law degrees. So I thought "why not me?"

I should probably include the two years (1996-1998) I spent away from school in Sydney, Australia as part of my education, since I learned a lot about life and myself. I was a missionary, and learned Vietnamese (learn being a very relative word) so I could work with Vietnamese immigrants.

So I guess that's it on the education. Unless maybe I go back and get a PhD in computer science (artificial intelligence, cognitive modeling, systems modeling) or an MFA in Creative Writing. I'd love to be a student forever! (My wife starts hitting me whenever I say that).

I currently work as a Patent Attorney in San Jose, CA, with the law firm Hickman Palermo Truong & Becker. I provide legal services to the software industry, particularly in intellectual property.

I performed various consulting jobs while earning a law degree. I also had a few legal internships in D.C. (telecommunicatiosn firm), Salt Lake (IP firm), and San Jose (software patents). You can read more about my professional history and ambitions on my Consulting page.

Prior to law school, among other jobs, I wrote technical documents for Brigham Young University, performed tech support and maintenance at the University of Texas' Advanced Research Laboratories, and finally settled down at Corda Technologies, where I wrote documentation, ran training seminars, nagged developers about product design, and wrote a lot of code.

My favorite job ever, by the way, was the sno-cone machine I worked at during summers as a teenager. Mmmm, ice and sugar.

I love the outdoors, especially hiking and camping. Though not particularly experienced, I also enjoy kayaking, canoeing, and cycling.

I am pretty enthusiastic about sports. I played Ultimate Frisbee competitively in the past, and still (when I have time) try to play Ultimate Frisbee, basketball, and volleyball in my free time. I am a major fan of Texas Rangers' baseball. I also follow San Antonio Spurs basketball, cycling, and soccer.

I am a moderate computer geek. I often find myself knee-deep in projects like (re)writing websites, hacking my router, installing custom ROMs on my phone (and my wife's phone, much to her chagrin), tinkering with my home theater server/PCs/devices, building computers, and so forth. I am also very interested in the latest developments in science, with a particular interest in astronomy and space exploration.

I have, in the past, been very enthusiastic about writing, especially poetry. My interest has waned over the years, for reasons too complex to explain here. I've put some of my writings on this web site, so humor me and click here to read them.

I enjoy singing in choirs at church. I find myself listening to a wide variety of genres, including classical, jazz, bluegrass, folk, rock, world, and so forth. I have a special place in my heart for early 90's alternative rock and folk (e.g. Smashing Pumpkins, Tori Amos).

I no longer care enough my reputation as a writer to admit that my TV/movie interests include Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Unbreakable. My sense of humor follows the lines of Newsradio, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Modern Family, and the Office. I'm developing a bit of a fetish with foreign films and the BBC. My short list of favorite writers include Steinbeck, Hemingway, Li-Young Lee, T.S. Eliot, and Shakespeare.

Rhodes Scholar. Well, no, not really. But why not. I'm smart enough.
And dammit, people like me. Or at least my kids do. But in high school I came in second for "Most Likely to Succeed" (no, I'm not bitter). And I once found the golden ticket in my Wonka bar and got to jump in a river of melted chocolate while little people sang and danced. Oh, and I think I had a few scholastic achievements somewhere in the past. They were moderately impressive. Trust me on this.