Tim enjoys his family, work, physics, outdoor adventures and photography. Tim was born and raised in a suburb west of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Prior to entering the software industry, he was a high energy physicist. He worked as a graduate student and postdoc in several accelerator laboratories around the world (SLAC, Fermilab, and DESY).

Julie was born in northern China and raised primarily in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province. She enjoys her family, reading, cooking and eating, some outdoor adventures, and most of all, ballet. She has been interested in dancing since she was a child, and has had the opportunity to take ballet since coming to the US for graduate school. For a number of years, she has taken ballet lessons from a retired Romanian prima ballerina. Before the children were born, she managed to take ballet classes four times a week. For a few years after the children were born, she did not have time to dance very much. Now that the children are a few years old, and she is no longer working, she has seriously returned to ballet, and takes about 10 classes per week.

Tim and Julie met at the opening night of photographer John Sexton's "Listen to the Trees" exhibit in Monterey in mid-October 1994, where Tim appoached Julie with the classic line "what is your favorite photograph in this exhibit?". They became engaged 3 1/2 years later, at sunset along the coast in Pacific Grove, and were married almost exacly four years after they met, at the Highlands Inn overlooking the Pacific Ocean south of Monterey.