Born in Holy Cross, Hospital in Silver Spring Maryland on 5/13/64. Family
- One brother named Robert Chris Brown askchrisb@gmaill.com
who is four years older and a skilled linguistic expert and comedy
writer (see his website at http://www.sketch22comedy.com.
- One sister named Sherry Lynne Brown, who is 2 years older and who is
married to Tony Bell, and mother to four Children (Jordan,Jayme,Robi
and Ian).
- My mother is Nancy Lou Brown.
- My biological father is Ernest Charles Brown. His selfishness and violence (hitting my mom and us) caused me to choose my grandfather Robert Clayton Carroll as my "father of choice" for childhood and later Admiral Dr. Roger Gilbertson as my father of choice when my grandfather died.
I
was named Mark Charles Brown when born. At age of 21 I legally changed
my name to Charles Mark Carroll mostly to honor my grandfather
Robert Clayton Carroll (married to Mildred Yarborough Carroll) who had
always been like Dad to me.
Relatives of Robert Clayton Carroll (Bob) of Davidson County, Denton
North Carolina are welcome to join our family reunion list @
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CarrollFamilyNC.
I went to Elementary School at Twinbrook Elementary school. A great
school with great teachers. Ms. O'meara thanks for my first student
teacher crush. Mrs. Hadley thanks for the wonderful story book moments
including Little House on the Prairie books and Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory. My most vivid memory from that time was in first
grade when my Mom called me home form School because my cat named
Snoopy was having kittens -- all over my best Sunday Church coat (back
before I had become an atheist). My first unreiquieted affections
(Sandra Benton) occurred there.
I went to Junior High at Broome Junior school. That was hell for
many reasons. A few teachers there were good, most were not, and I
did read the Outsiders and other S.E. Hinton books
which was a high point. The only great teachers there were my math
teacher (Mr. Hiedelburg I think was his name) who was superb and Ms.
Choy who was sweet and radical, and I ultimately dissapointed by not finishing all my homework.
I went to High School at Richard Montgomery; that was hell for
many different reasons. There were great times like at the age of 14, I began studying to gain a
FCC first class certification from a corresponce school called National
Radio Institute (NRI). This was a logical extension of my extreme
interest in Electronics and consumer gadgets like calculators and
video/handheld games. I dropped out of High School in 10th grade because of sheer
boredom, and audited classes at University of Maryland which had other
“ok“ tecahres but no star teachers except Brian McLaren who was amazing.
Between ages of 11 and 15 I began to pursue Roller Skating for fun
at Congressional Roller Skating Rink in Rockville. I took Dance skating
lessens and met many really interesting people there: Cathy Willet (wow
what legs and smile), Cathy Mulligan (sweetheart and a half), Walton,
Charlie Hook, Gleann Stearns, Darren and his family, Anne Jenkins (a
better Mom than my own). I learned dances like The Monteray Tango etc.
and was pretty good at roller limbo, not very good at spins at all.
There were dramas and good times and bad -- it was a active
community. Walton died in a scuba accident. People got pregnant. Their
were scandals. Blonde Karen Wachter would be first girl to torture
me (Anne used to call her the “buzzard“ when she was mean to me) -
a cycle that would not end for many years till I married Naoko when I
was 30 - who was my biggest supporter and gave me 2 great
kids and a great set of in-laws andh sister-in-law and a whole new
perspective on many things -- and a better life. At Laurel Skating Rink I would later meet
Mary Kafes an amazing woman who was sort of a pseudo mother to me when my own mother was too busy.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CongressionalRollerRink/ is a YahooGroup I created so the people who went to Congressional Roller
Rink can join up and catch up old times and new times.
At the age of 15 the Roller Rink Manager from Congressional Ronnie
Mandel (Ronald Lee Mandel) moved his job to manager of Laurel
Wheel-a-While, and I started doing part time work there. He began
molesting me in my sleep even though he had pretended to be a
friend of mine for 2 years prior to these disturbing actions.
When my brother (aided by his good friend Claudia) rescued me from that
Mary Kafes and all roller rink friends turned their backs on me. They
assumed I lied and made this up, threatened me to shut up, etc. I lost
every friend I had then. What a depressing time.
Eventually (at the age of 22 approximately) I went to court and had
him convicted (he was also convicted in PG county on similar charges.)
He pleaded guilty and despite a passionate speech by the Montgomery
County judge on how henious the actions were, he recieved only a
suspended sentence which means he served no jail time. From this I
learned first hand that our courts do not serve their role to protect the community and helpless children
and also that many people do not believe the truth if a good friend of
theirs is involved. In my modest attempt to protect the community and
young children, I will mention the name of the man who has been
convicted twice in the state of Maryland for child molesting and who is
suspected in molesting dozens of other children. His name is Ronald Lee
Mandel. Many years ago he managed a Wheel-A-While skating rink in
Laurel and Seabrook Maryland. I mention the company he worked for
because they were negligent. Their owner, Jack Becker, ignored my
family's statement he should be removed from his job because it put him
in contact with children and he was willing to let that monster loose
on children who skated at his business because he preferred to believe
Ronnie Mandel instead of us. I also met a now good friend, Gary
Costello, an amazing guy.
At the age of 17, I moved to Denton, North Carolina to live with my
Grandmother and Grandfather Carroll. I got my GED there, got
my driver's license, dated Tammy Huff and went to Davidson County
Community College which had surprisingly high quality
teachers. At Davidson County Community College in
Lexington I met a history teacher (Mr. Oakley) and an English teacher
named Robert Vorsteg wheo were amazing and embody what every teacher
should be. 3 counselors there: Myra Bruff, Karen Hedricks and Randall
Hennion were a big influence and very good friends to me in a very
difficult time in my life. At that time, I became really very entranced
by the passion and ironic lyrics on SuperTramp's Paris album and the
sarcasm on Pete Townsend's The Best Cowboys have Chineese Eyes. I lived
there for a little over 2 years and then movzed to Charlotte NC mostly
to avid my Grandmother who was ever the harpy as much as my grandfather
was a saint.
I only stayed in Charlotte a year. It was rough. Washing dishes
at Po'Boys restaurant, gettnig my wallet stolen at a Loverboy concert,
working third shift at 7-11 (midnight till 8am) and many traumas. High
point was meeting Sandy and Ken Huff who ran the Dragon's nest.
Coming back to Maryland I tried Montgomery College. Most of their
teachers were perfunctory except for Professor Cronin. Very
dissapointing. Only good point was occasional car-pooling with David
Melton and Ron Hynes and listening to Billy Joel in car.
At age of 20 outside of Dream Wizards in Rockville I met Admiral Dr. Roger Gilbertson (http://www.sunburstguru.com is his website) who would encourage me to pursue a profession in computers instead of other areas.
At the age of 21, I began keeping a journal of daily, weekly and
montly events. In that journal I also tried to write down everything I
remembered about childhood events too, which was very insightful.
That is also the year I taught my first computer class (for John
Tomar) a class on Framework (by Ashton-Tate) for the Navy. I branched
out into teachin Wordperfect for DOS and Lotus as well.
My first job for a training company was for a place called
MicroSystems International, which went out of business. There I met a
genius named Geno Zomparelli, who I felt was a rare individual who I
lost touch with, but found quite interesting. The next training company
was called MicroTutor International, a company owned by Mike Botega and
PoCheng Chen. They ran out of capital within 4 months, and told me a
the last minute, even though I asked them many times if they needed
investors or capitol. Then I took over the office spaces in phone and
attempted to build my first company. I enlisted the help of Lee
McMurray, Frank Hastings, Barbara Best and took a partner named Keith
Newman, a friend I had met at Dream Wizards years ago. He eventually
destroyed the company and my first enterprenurial effort went up in
flames.
I met a Japanese couple named Ryoko and Hitoshi Yamasaki. They were
a very nice couple and it biased me to study Japan and get interested
in Japanese culture.
I worked for the The International Monetary Fund in
Washington, DC for 2.5 years, and there I met Shahbaz Khan who taught
me quite a bit about how to get along with people and manage time and
deadlines and was maybe the greatest manager I ever met.
At the age of 31 (1995), I wrote several letters to people interested in
being pen-pals in Japan. Naoko Yoshitsugu wrote me back,and called and
hundreds of letters, faxes and phone calls later we were married. I also left The International Monetary Fund to work for Mitem (creator of an amazing middleware / stream scraper tool named
MitemView) where I had learned much more about programming than I
could learn anywhere else inder the tutelage of Dan Corenzwit one of
the best coders/designers I ever met (and I have met hundreds and
observed the correspondence of thousands).
At the age of 34 (1998) Naoko gave birth to a son we named Hitoshi Yoshitsugu Carroll.
In that year a few weeks before Hitoshi was born I left Mitem to change my part time training I had been doing since the
age of 20 to full time traning naming my traning company
Carroll Software Training in memory of my grandfather Robert Carroll who was a great businessman and grandfather.
The training business made a lot of money from 1997-1999 while ASP was rising to power.
At the age of 36 (2000) Naoko gave birth to a daughter we named Michiko Yoshitusugu Carroll.
From 200 to 2002 training was slow, ASP.net was in beta not 1.0 and
people don't buy training for beta platforms (although some did) -- and
MS shipped ASP.net 1.0 2 years after they promised me so I decided to
get out of training and go back to contract coding. Like Windows 1.0
any new platform takes 2 or 3 versions to reach a tipping point -- I
knew training was not going to have the volume I wanted at the price
point I wanted till ASP.net 3.0 most likely so I decided to go back to
contract coding for a few years.
At the age of 41 I am now in full swing contract coding and contemplating where I might enjoy doing contract coding for a decade trying each company with shorter coding stints..... And occasionally traning when the price is right to afford the deluxe classes I prefer to offer as opoosed to low end training.
Michi and Hitoshi are going to school in Tokyo to ensure their Japanese skills are as high as their Engilsh skills and to ensure they are bi-culturalm as well as bilingual. And te spend quality time with their grandparens as I spent with mine in my youth. They come back to US for Winter and Summer vacation.