James Todd, aka "Jot"

In May 1998 I graduated from Brown University with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and a Bachelor of Arts in History. From August of 1998 though February of 2006 I worked at Turbine Games in Westwood, Massachusetts where I developed software for several online massively multiplayer game titles including Asheron's Call and Dungeons and Dragons Online. In March of 2006 I began work at Microsoft in the SQL Server group. I'm mostly interested in systems-level computer programming work, particularly in the area of massively multiuser server architectures. In practice this runs the gamut from networking to clustering to database work to OS programming.

I'm married to my wonderful wife, Kathy! Together we have a beautiful daughter, Claire!

Kathy and I used to live in Norwood, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. The T (that's the Boston transit authority) runs commuter rail trains to get there.

In the summer of 1996, I worked as an intern in the Information Technology division of Goldman Sachs in New York City. The summer of 1997 I continued my work as a systems administrator for the Brown Computer Science department, which you can read more about below.

I'm proud to say that I'm a member of the Alpha Delta Phi society, the oldest Greek organization at Brown. In the 1970s we went co-ed, which makes ADPhi far from your stereotypical frat.

If you like there is sorted list of bookmarks of places I've found useful on the web.

There are a few things I did around the Brown CS department while I was an undergrad:

• I worked as a sysadmin for Brown CS, giving me the nifty acronyn of SPOC (System Programmer, Operator and Consultant). I named my sparc workstation locke after the Philosopher.
• Before becoming a SPOC, I was a consultant in the sunlab.
• I was a teaching assistant a few times...
  
  • In 1995 I TA'ed CS004, Introduction to Scientific Computing.
  • Spring 1996 semester I TA'ed CS016, Algorithms and Data Structures.
  • Fall 1996 I TA'ed CS127, which is everything you ever wanted to know about Databases. :-)

As you might expect, I took a lot of CS classes. Fall 1996 I took CS169, where I implemented a simple multithreaded operating system. Spring 1997 I took CS152, which is a computation theory course, and CS222, which is topics in operatings systems. For a touch of hardware variety, I took Engineering 164, Design of Computing Systems (ie, hardware and lots of assembly). I also took a lot of other classes, but those were the ones I enjoyed a lot.
I'd link to the page of the history classes I took to get my history degree, but the history department isn't quite as enthralled by the web as the CS dept is.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the other SPOCs who worked with me as an undergrad, Stephanie Schaaf and Dan Price. They kept me on my toes, and if I didn't know how to do something then one of them probably did. They get special kudos for being able to stand my awful sense of humor while still working with me on a regular basis.

In CS 32 back in the spring of 1996, I helped write this nifty networked, asynchronous multiplayer strategic warfare game (try saying that three times, fast!) called Command HQ as a port to Solaris. We never got it entirely working and we haven't touched it in years (and none of us have any interest in picking it up again), but it was a good learning experience for all of us. I wrote it with my friends Dan Price, Natasha Gelfand, and Motif wizard Todd Deluca.

One of my best friends keeps me company while I'm programming the night away, and that's my frog Sam. She's got a rather extensive family these days, too.

Reaching me...