Rob

Rob is "mostly" from South Carolina, having spent 13 years there before moving to Pennsylvania in high school. After graduating from Lehigh University he started working for a small company building and supporting Linux clusters. Along the way he met Rob Ross, started using his file system, and eventually moved to Chicago and started working for him at Argonne. Rob and Kaitlyn did indeed work in the same building, but actually got to know each other over the MCS mud (a kind of Internet chat system) -- don't let anyone tell you the Internet is isolating! Kaitlyn and Rob did indeed have their first date on Halloween 2002, but it took Rob a week or so to realize Kaitlyn wasn't just being friendly. Not a great start, but it's been a good run since!

Kaitlyn

Kaitlyn was born in Taiwan. Her family moved to NYC when she was six years old. She worked in her parents' grocery store and laundromat since she was six. She left NYC to go to University of Chicago. In some twist of fate, she took an independent study class on OpenGl with Mike Papa/Rick Stevens and then started working at MCS. Rob met Kaitlyn at a friend's party but he didn't introduce himself. Six months later, Kaitlyn joined the Treetop mud. Even though Rob's office was upstairs, and Kaitlyn's office was downstairs, they communicated via the mud. Their first date was on Halloween 2002. Kaitlyn's costume was a corpse. Rob wore pajamas.