About Us

Here you get to hear all about us, both together and indivudually. Lucky you! If you're friends of ours that know us, you're probably reading this because you're so engrossed with us that you can't get enough and want to absorb every morsel that is Jeff and Laurie. If you don't know us, you're probably eager to hear all about us and wish you could get closer, but are willing to settle for what you can get now. :) In either case, as promised: All About Us...
Jeff & Laurie on boat
About Jeff      About Laurie      About Us
Jeff's resume      Laurie's resume

About Jeff

How do you fill in a page with a title like "About You"?
All I can think of to start with is to tell a bit about my history first.

I grew up in Stoneham, Massachusetts (USA), a small town which has been famous over the years for such things as having the most octagonal houses in the world, having the most drug stores and gas stations on one road in one town, and the Zoo. I was born to my mom, Ilze Keegan, and my dad, Lawrence Vincent Keegan on January 25, 1970. About three years later, I got a kid brother, Jonathan Michael Keegan.

Jeff at York Beach Various cool things happened between then and fifth grade; we got an Atari 2600 (oh man was that cool), we went to summer camp a lot, we spent time in Woburn at the Cannons' house, made countless trips up to York Beach, and saw Star Wars 100 times one summer in the theater.

Then in 5th grade (1979-1980ish) I started learning about computers (before anyone had computers, you understand.. it was a total hobby, unlike today where they're as common as toasters). My Dad had given me a Radio Shack book on BASIC (which by the way is a good story.. click that link!), and then a few days later my fifth grade teacher Ms. Blankenheim brought a computer into the class. From that point on I was interested in computers, and I won't go into my chronology about what computers I've owned or anything drawn out like that. Well, ok, actually, if you really want to know, here....

I got my first job at Caldor, in Stoneham, working as a cashier. I can't remember how many years I worked there, but it was somewhere around four I think. I eventually moved up to the position of "Head Cashier" (oooooh), meaning I then worked at the "Courtesy Desk" (a misnomer if ever I encountered one), dealing with the worst of the customers. I was quite happy the day that Caldor went bankrupt (and used to have a link here to the bankrupcy filing, but it seems to be gone now). It's painful to even think about the place.. Even the logo was depressing - a dreary, brown rainbow. Ugh. That place did a lot of damage to my mind. The damages came in many forms:

But enough of that unpleasant thread of my high school years. In High School (Stoneham High School) I started learning Unix, I learned Pascal, and learned the best ways to skip out of school for lunch. I got my first car (a 1978 red Cutlass Supreme, which I loved), and I was first introduced to Rush.

And then there was college. I attended what was then known as the University of Lowell (which was renamed to the University of Massachusetts Lowell just before I graduated). When I started the curriculum in the fall of 1988, ULowell was in the top 5 universities in the entire country for Computer Science. I enjoyed every bit of college, so much so that I went on to get my masters degree (also at UMass Lowell). My major for both was computer science.

Throughout my bachelors and masters degree, I worked at a research center within the university called the Center for Productivity Enhancement (CPE). I have many great memories from there, including the Lincoln Logs Factory of the Future project (which actually built Lincoln Log houses using two-robot workcells), a trip we took to NASA in Houston with the Factory, and a trip we took to Chicago.

In college (and after) I had a whole bunch of roommates. Let's see.. (Apologies for any spelling errors) Freshman year they paired me up with Jim Halloran and Steve Grasso on the 16th floor of Fox Hall. Sophomore year I shared a room with Wayne Sennott from Lexington. Junior year 8 of us managed to get an 8-man suite in the new North Hall (there's some name for it now, but we were the first to live there ever, in room 302). There was me and Dave Pourier, Kurt Overberg and Chris Durkee, Kevin Stearns and Gary Tomasetti, and Tim Kumm and Mike Dango. Over the next 3 semesters we also had Tom Royer, Ian Kane, Peter something, and Chris Carpenter live there. When I graduated, I moved into a condo in Lowell with Kim Kokernak and Dave Fox as roommates. I lived in that condo for ten years, too lazy to move. Roommates there also included Tim Kumm (again), Terry Griffin, Kelly O-something (long story there), and Phil Richardson. (Technically, Laurie counts as a roommate too because she lived with me in that condo for three months while she was looking for our house). While I'm talking about that condo, I might as well mention the apartment pictures for the contest. I should have won. Grrrr..

Anyway, I then worked for Carberry Technology, a subdivision of Electronic Book Technologies (EBT), for about four and a half years. There I wrote a plug-in for Netscape Navigator called FIGleaf Inline that allowed you to view 14 or so file formats right within one of Netscape's windows, zooming in on images and rotating them whenever you want. Then I got the chance to go to the first Netscape Developers Conference in San Francisco. This was pretty cool, but nothing compared to the trip to Vail Colorado that I got to take right after with Bryan DiAntonio (snowboarding will never be the same again on the east coast, unfortunately).

EBT was purchased in the summer of 1996 by INSO corporation, and in November Carberry Technology was dissolved. (None of us wanted to move to Kansas, which was one option, so it ended). I then went to work for a company in Marlborough called NetScheme (I've made no secret about the fact that I despise the name). After five months there they ran out of money, but it was fun while it lasted.

Netscheme had taught me an important lesson - the technology you're working with at a company shouldn't be enough to make you work there - you should like what the product itself is too. At Netscheme I had been writing Java, which was good, but the product was a database product that let you export your existing database via the web. (yawn) So I took three months looking for my next job. I'd interview, turn down jobs, go to the beach to snorkel, go for more interviews, turn those down, etc. Then I found one I was really interested in - it was a company called InfoMation (owned by CMGI). The product was called Echo - it gathered news for you from sites you told it to scrape, and aggregated it all into one newspaper page for you. I'd already been pulling pieces out of web pages for my own use (the AFC East stats, back then), so I was happy to join. We enhanced it to mail or page you when articles came in, mail out a daily summary of news, use even more feeds than it had, and distribute those feeds via XML (in addition to the UI we'd created). It was a great product, and I loved working on it.

The ruble dropped, half of InfoMation's staff was laid off, and the rest of us were merged with another CMGI company - PlanetDirect. We stayed there for a while, got fed up with being second class citizens there, and went off to start CMGI Solutions with technology I had written. Solutions bought Netwright, Nascent, and Activerse at first. It later bought Clara Vista, then Tallan, then Tallan took over ownership of the company and we all chose to look elsewhere in CMGI (rather than join the Tallan pre-pubescent sweatshop). (If someone from Corporate wants me to take that part down, I'll be happy to - just ask). By this time PlanetDirect (who was still using Echo) had changed its name to MyWay, and was eager to take us back. CMGI's stock was worth a lot back then, so it made sense even if it felt more like a lifeboat than a real challenge. One good thing had come out of CMGI Solutions though - I met Laurie! :)

Eventually MyWay East let people go, with a fair amount of warning, and AltaVista started announcing internally that they were looking for people. I started at AltaVista in December, 2000, just in time for the Christmas party playing paintball in Boston. :) That's where I work now.

Then, you should really read the Birthday/Proposal Story and view these pictures..

And that's a very rough draft of a sketchy detail of about 1 ten-thousandth of what's happened to me so far. Enough history. My interests (a bit more current) include snowboarding, sailing, rollerblading, snorkeling, scuba diving (NAUI Advanced Certified), rock climbing, photography, hang gliding, films, and Laurie. :)

There. More than you ever wanted to know about me. Can I believe someone actually read all that? Nah, maybe you just skipped down here to read about Laurie...

About Laurie

I grew up in Andover, MA. I went to St. Augustine's Elementary school for half of kindergarten, then went to Shawsheen Elementary school until it closed after 3rd grade. In fourth grade, I was transfered to West Elementary because I lived on "the wrong side of the tracks" to go to Doherty elementary like everyone else. So, I went to west, which I hated, for 3 years and in 7th grade I went to East Jr. high, which was renamed in either eigth or nineth grade to Doherty Jr. High. In 10th grade I went on to Andover High School and graduated in 1990. The most significant teachers in that time of my life were Mr. Loschi in 5th grade, who I did not like. He was my math teacher and told me that I should not be in the accelerated math classes because I wasn't good in math, and then put me into a lower level math class the following year. I remember not liking to do my homework back then because it bored me...it was too easy, not too difficult, and of course he missed that completely! I was so horrible in math that I ended up getting my bachelors degree in Math from Merrimack college in 1994. So much for Mr. Loschi's completely wrong assessment of my abilities! I certainly enjoyed that satisfaction of proving him wrong! I'd like to see how well he did in Real Analysis! Anyway, so much for negative influences - the best teacher I ever had in the Andover Public School System was Ms. Finneran. She was my Junior and Senior year English teacher. She was the only teacher ever to actually teach me how to read in a manner that I understood. All the other english teachers I had from 7th - 10th grade never taught you how to read. She was a great teacher, and a great inspiration for getting me to set high goals for myself.

During high school and college I worked at daycares in town, until my Junior year when I got a job babysitting the 4 greatest kids ever :) Samantha, Benjamin, Theodore and Margaret. We had lots of fun the summer Margaret was born, and through out the year. I enjoyed going on vacations with them to smuggler's notch and Chicago for their cousin's wedding. They are a great part of my life, even today!

After college, I went to work for Raytheon in Tewksbury, MA. I stayed for 4 years there, which was far too long. I came out underpaid, but far wiser to the world. Getting away from that place was good. I then went to News Internet Services. It was a great company with a great bunch of people. It is sad that it ended so fast. I was there for a year, until May of 2000 when the former vice president and architect started a company together, and was immediately bought by CMGI. We were NetWright for a short time, and then our name was changed to CMGI Solutions. CMGI Solutions was a company with great potential and extremely bad management. Ultimately, the management killed us. They bought a company called Tallan, and Tallan took over, offering all the engineers a full-time travel position. This did not go over well, and I turned down the job. I'd just bought a brand new house, and I had met the best thing that happend to me - my husband-to-be Jeff. Jeff and I are the only good thing that came out of CMGI Solutions. From there, I went to Engage, another CMGI company. I am a software engineer, I can design code, write it, and test it. Currently I'm in QA, but I was in development for the past 5 years.

I moved into an apartment with a college friend, Allie. We lived together for 4 years, until I bought a condo in Methuen. It was a great condo, and I filled it up with 4 cats, Sneaky, Squeeky Boo and Jewel. They are adorable, and very playful. I lived in my condo for a year, until the crazy real estate market went up so much that I had a downpayment for a house... so I bought a 3 bedroom colonial, which is wonderful! The cats loved the new space, and have adapted well to it!

Jeff and I started dating December of 1999, and pretty much knew from the first time we went out together that it was right. Since there was to be a discrepancy of 3 months from the time I sold my condo and moved into the house, I moved in with him for 3 months, and when I closed on the house, he moved in immediately. We then got married May 5, 2001. It's been the best 2 years of my life. I have never been happier, and things are good. We plan to move into a much bigger house, as Jeff's stuff has filled the house, garage and basement! We clearly need more space! So, we're saving up, and should be in a bigger house in a year or so.

Since I met jeff, I have aquired a few new hobbies. I now absolutely love snowboarding, and I got certified in scuba diving on my honeymoon in Hawaii! I also love rollerblading and camping now! We've had so much fun together...and I'm looking forward to much more!

About Us

We met at CMGI Solutions, when Laurie popped her head over a cubicle, saying hi, to meet this guy Jeff that had been described to her as a "male version of her". Within the first day she mistakenly stated that she was always right, which Jeff corrected with "Jeff is always right".

On December 26, 1999, we went out for dinner and a movie (Man on the Moon) with friends (Kevin, Caroline, and Cheryl Stearns). Afterwards we walked Jeff's brother's girlfriend's now-deceased dog Bob (thanks Bob! We remember you!), and when it was too cold for him to keep walking we brought him back and walked more on our own.

We hit it off immediately, and have been together ever since. Laurie briefly moved in with Jeff into Jeff's old apartment while waiting for the house she'd bought (and Jeff gained a sugar mama.. :)). In April, we both moved into that new house (where we live now) in Methuen, MA.

We got married on May 5th, 2001, in Windam, NH, and spent three weeks in Hawaii on our honeymoon.

At the time of this writing (September, 2001), our collective hobbies include snowboarding, rollerblading, SCUBA diving, movies, cleaning, , mowing the lawn, and torturing playing with our four cats. We also love boogie-boarding, at least when there are waves.

There ya go! Now go check out some other part of our web site... There's a lot there!
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