Geoffrey Falk was born in in the sleepy southern Manitoba village of Steinbach, just after a huge April blizzard. His dad has home movies of it—the blizzard, that is, not the birth.

Most of his aunts are schoolteachers; most of his uncles are farmers (one of whom claims to have taught Loreena McKennitt to play the flute). That's the way that God intended for men and women to be, after all. It's in the Bible somewhere, I'm sure.

Geoff's dad was a high school math and computer science teacher. His mom ran a family chicken farm prior to getting married, after her own father had moved out to the west coast of Canada to "convert the heathens" in that more temperate climate.

Geoff attended Elementary school in New Bothwell, home to Manitoba's most famous cheese. Approximately 30% of the school's attendees today are "special" students, if you know what I mean. That's scary, when you realize that it's not a "special" school, i.e., that's just a product of the gene pool.

Or maybe it's something in the cheese?

Geoff doesn't remember a whole lot from his childhood, except being really lousy at summarizing short stories in Grade Two or Three. He's recently figured out that it's because to him, as to all good programmers, every detail is important, so how do you decide what to leave out?