Bob was born in Detroit on November 2, 1963. Bob spent his early childhood on the West Side of Detroit until age 10, where he attended Detroit public schools. By the time Bob moved out, his elementary school (Pitcher Elementary) playground was barbed wired and all the windows were barred and one of his friends was shot by an even younger kid. In elementary school, Bob spent all his time reading about science and building model rockets and planes.
Then Bob moved to the West side 'burb of Livonia, Michigan, where he went to Whitman Junior High and Franklin High School (how American). In Junior High, Bob spent all of his time making Super 8mm sci-fi and animated films with Dave Tucker and John Spanich, one of which was sold to the TV show Kidsworld and can still be caught in re-runs.
In High School, Bob spent his time playing role playing games. He loved math and science, but found school awfully boring, so he tried to get out of it as much as possible. School activities worked well, like student government, the tennis team, and various clubs.
Bob went to college at Michigan State University. It's rather difficult for a middle class kid in the US to afford to go to an expensive private school like CMU -- it now costs over 100,000 US$ all in, or about 60K more than a state school. At MSU, Bob did math and computer science, with lots of 20th century philosophy and psychology on the side. The good part about US universities is their flexible undergrad curricula.
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