Growing up as a computer enthusiast in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the author dreamt of working in Silicon Valley and eventually realized that dream, becoming deeply involved in the evolution of computing technology. He describes his experiences in the shift from mini- to micro-computing and the rise of the Internet, with a focus on the most transformative shift of his career: cloud computing. Co-founding Akimbi Systems, later acquired by VMware, he contributed to the foundation of VMware's cloud provisioning platform. Now at NorthScale, he is focused on developing open-source infrastructure software, particularly supporting the memcached community, which powers numerous top web applications. The author emphasizes the importance of contributing back to the open-source community and expresses enthusiasm for future developments in cloud computing and open-source software.