My name is Ben Goodger. I am 27 years old and live in Los Altos Hills, California. I live with my fiancee Leslie Hawthorn. We have a website for our house-related adventures, it's called Ranchtastic. I am a Software Engineer for Google Inc.
What does one say on these generic about pages? I could dive deeply into any number of details about myself but would return later and be puzzled as to why I selected that. So for the full picture, just read this blog or talk to me or the people who know me.
I have a number of interests, including architecture, cars, technology, etc. I used to have a strong interest in software development and web development for fun, but since I've taken this on as a job my desires have shifted to spending my time on other things.
I first got into software development with web design, in 1997, when I decided to make my own web site about the TV show "Sailor Moon". I did that for a couple of years until I sort of reached the limit of things I felt could do with browsers. My sites had some interesting content but for me the content was never as much fun as the technological components - the DHTML, script, etc. I had content perhaps because I wanted people to come and see my script tricks. Fortunately the Mozilla project came along to pick up the slack in my learning curve.
For seven years from 1999 to 2006, I contributed to the Mozilla project, beginning as a volunteer while studying at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, before being offered a job at Netscape where I worked from 2000-2003 on the Netscape 6.x and 7.x series of products. After the dissolution of Netscape browser development, I moved to the Mozilla Foundation, where I worked as the project lead for Firefox in 2003 and 2004. In 2005 I moved to Google, continuing to work on Firefox with a number of others. Aside from being the primary agitator for Firefox within the Mozilla project for a long time, my favorite accomplishments include Firefox's popular Extension system, its comprehensive import utility, and numerous user interface innovations throughout the browser. When I was working on Firefox full time, I wrote about my experiences and my thoughts on its development at my work blog, Inside Firefox.
I worked in Mountain View, California at Netscape's headquarters in the year 2000 before returning to New Zealand in 2001 to complete the second half of my Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Systems) degree at the University of Auckland. High on the confidence of having worked for a year, I thought it was going to be easy, but such things seldom are. Balancing full time school with contributions to a vast and fast moving software project was not easy, and I was not always successful.
I graduated in May of 2003 and relocated to California shortly thereafter, working again in Netscape's Mountain View offices for a couple of months before most of the browser and mail teams were laid off on July 15, 2003. This was after months of confusion and what Dilbert readers will identify as a "Mobility pool."
I have a love-hate relationship with the Bay Area. San Francisco is great, and there are many great cities down the peninsula. There are so many wonderful things close at hand, this is a good place to live. At the same time, Silicon Valley is an urban wasteland, with too much high density housing, communities designed with the car in mind primarily (miles of faceless strip malls and such spread so far apart you basically have to drive between them).
For years, I was a PC/Windows user, but these days I have switched to MacOS. Leslie and I both have 24" iMacs.
Education, like I said, University of Auckland School of Engineering for four years. Before that Auckland Grammar School in Mt Eden. I grew up in Auckland, living first in Otahuhu (until I was 14) then moving to Royal Oak, one of the suburbs adjacent to the One Tree Hill domain. My grandparents have lived in Otahuhu for most of their lives, and have a house by the Tamaki river. I was born in London, England.
I enjoy writing, and drawing (though mostly inanimate objects - these days, houses - since I don't have a very good sense for light or depth/perspective, so I prefer to work with elevations).
That's all I can think of.
