About
Michael Birk
mbirk@forwardlateral.com
I’m a computer programmer and aspiring entrepreneur living in Alameda, CA. I’ve worked in the Silicon Valley since 1997, mainly for small- and medium-sized independent software vendors.
You might bump into me elsewhere:
- Blogger: http://www.blogger.com/profile/19058347
- del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us/mbirk
- eBay: http://feedback.ebay.com/…userid=michael_birk
- Friendster: http://www.friendster.com/profiles/mbirk
- Jabber: mbirk@forwardlateral.com
- Last.fm: http://www.last.fm/user/Michael_Birk/
- MySpace: http://myspace.com/michael_birk
- Plastic: http://www.plastic.com/members.html;name=mbirk
- Salon.com: Michael Birk
- Schneier on Security: Michael Birk
- ServerBeach: http://forums.serverbeach.com/member.php?u=2535
- Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/~mbirk/
- Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/users/mbirk/
- Technorati: http://technorati.com/profile/mbirk
- Usenet: groups.google.com
- StumbleUpon: http://mbirk.stumbleupon.com/
- Wikipedia: http://wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Michael_Birk
- Yelp: Yahoo: http://profiles.yahoo.com/mcbirk
Background
Born in 1972, I grew up in the midwest, in Decatur, IL — a mid-sized, blue collar town of about 90,000, centrally located between Chicago and St. Louis. I started programming computers at a young age, even as far back as fourth or fifth grade. I received a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1994, and an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Wisconson-Madison in 1997.
Why “Forward Lateral?”
I started forwardlateral.com in 2002 to manage my private fantasy football league. Football purists will tell you that the forward lateral is an oxymoron; it doesn’t exist. Instead, we have only the illegal forward pass. Of course, in real life, whenever a player attempts to lateral the football downfield, the announcers always say, “oh, you can’t do that, that’s a forward lateral.” Reality follows perception.
Et Cetera
People named Michael Birk who are not me:
