From the beginning to the end,
sorry for the inconvenience.
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1961 Born, Oakland California - fifth generation Californian
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1968 Attended first Oakland Raiders football game: Raiders 13 - Buffalo 10
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1977 Saw Led Zeppelin’s last North American concert appearance
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1978 Bought first car, a 1969 Dodge Charger ($600)
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Joined a gang, The Nomadz
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1980 Graduated Las Lomas High School, Walnut Creek California
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1980-1984 BS Physics, UC San Diego, cum laude
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Started using e-mail
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Met Miles Dylan
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Had long hair, didn't wear shoes
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1982 Attended Birmingham University, England
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1984-1990 PhD Physics, UC Santa Barbara
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Was not awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics
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1985-1990 Worked on the TPC/Two-Gamma experiment at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
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1985 Married Heather’s mom “what a great party, I knew everyone and they all liked me"
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1985 Held a baby for the first time, Heather L Stephens
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1986 Joined UC Santa Barbara's Particle Physics Group
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1989 Named the James Chadwick Scholar of the Ettore Majarana International School for Subnuclear
Physics, Erice, Sicily, Italy
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1990 Discovered the R(1525), a particle created in theinteraction of a nearly-real and a quite-virtual
photon
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1990-1993 Postdoctoral Research Assistant, University of Florida
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Performed the world’s most accurate measurements of rare decays of bottom-quarks
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Was shot in the chest while riding bike to work - they wanted $600 to take the pellett out... it’s
still there, 6th rib down on the right.
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1991-1993 Worked on the CLEO experiment at Cornell University
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1993 Professor of Physics, University of Texas at Arlington
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1990-1999 Worked on the D-Zero experiment at Fermi National
Accelerator Lab
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Was on the team that discovered the top quark
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1995 Bought a goofy looking house in Mansfield Texas
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Saw an ad in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram for free German
Wire-Haired Pointer puppies, brought home my Uncle Sherman
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Presented results on the top-quark discovery in Ho Chih Minh
City, Vietnam
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1996 Spoke on Quantum Chromodynamics at the Quantum Field
Theory and High Energy Physics Workshop (QFTHEP96) in St.
Petersburg Russia
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Learned the lesson of Vodka with a wierd guy from Trinidad and
a nutty Belgian woman
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1997 Taught relativistic quantum field theory to high school and junior
high students
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The students nailed it.
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1998 Spoke at the XXXIII Rencontres du Moriond confrence on QCD in Les Arcs France
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Breakfast 7-9a, talks 9-12, ski 12-5p, talks 5-7p, dinner 7-10p, hang out in the lounge 10-12p,
repeat - realized that bruises after skiing are like scratches after sex - they just mean you're
doing it right
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1999 Director of Advanced Technology, Enhanced Messaging Systems, a wireless-web startup
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Worked for a megalomaniac - learned everything I needed to know about business, intellectual
property and engineering.
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At Scarborough Renaissance Faire, Standing Bear Cooper told me that I am "a portal"
o
Became “The Stand Man” selling food in the grandstand at high school football games to
support the Band Boosters - made a lot of wise cracks, never had my ass kicked, but deserved
it.
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2000 Spent 4
hours under the
bridge in
Aberdeen WA
where Kurt
Cobain
composed
because it
meant
something to
Heather. I don’t
know what.
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2001 Scientist, Agilent Technologies, Dallas Texas, part of Agilent’s Field Sales Force
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2002 Toured the US giving day-long seminars to engineers on fiber optics
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2003 AFC Championship game: Radiers vs Titans - Metallica showed up on a flatbed truck and played
a concert in the parking lot before the game. One of the best days ever. Ever!
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2003-2004 Toured the US giving half-day seminars on timing noise (jitter) in high data rate systems
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2003 Searched for the Holy Grail in Cornwall, bought a coffee cup at King Arthur’s birthplace instead
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2004 Moved home to California
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Driving across the Arizona border, there was a rainbow behind us - I am somewhere over the
rainbow
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Pub Creep through Petaluma on my birthday
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2005 Visited the tomb of King Arthur, searched for the Holy Grail in Devonshire, Ireland, and Scotland
(bought two coffee cups)
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Writer, physicist, public speaker, Petaluma California
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2006 At Litquake - natural born MC
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Found me a Button and joined that elite club of California real
estate owners...
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2007 Ran for Petaluma City Council - humiliating, but amusing and
welcome defeat
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2008 Daughter graduated from UC Santa Cruz - meeting the
minimum requirement I set for her the day she was born. Felt a
cosmic pat on the back.
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Stared at the ocean from the deck of a cruise ship for 10 days
- it was “swell”
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2009
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Uncle Sherman Died (1995-2009) - Uncle Sherman was a wire-haired pointer, well, he was sort
of big for a wire-haired pointer, but, of course, he was from Texas.
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He was the right dog for the job.Went to the bottom of Baja California to
sit in the sand with beer and pelicans
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Professor Buckley, Spot-headed Hill Dog, applied for and was granted
his position.
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2010 The God Patent was published by Numina Press!
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Booked the shit out of myself - speeches, readings, interviews... being a
rock star is exhausting but wonderful in a sick, twisted way. No wonder
they go nuts.
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2011 Cruise to Hawaii with Jim and all of his friends.
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Snorkeled around a crater, swam around in the shower of a waterfall, searched high and low for
the perfect Mai Tai, can’t beat Big Don’s though - only available in Redding.
© Ransom Stephens, 2012.
Like a dragonfly - darting from task to
task and mastering every one.
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