About Tim Philip

About Tim Philip

Warning: If you don't have a sense of humor, turn back now!

Tim Philip was born in Sue. St. Marie, Ontario, Canada. At a very young age he was banished to Saskatchewan. He spent many depressing years growing up there. Upon completing high school he escaped to Edmonton, Alberta for a year of University. However, the chess club at the U of A kidnapped him for the whole year, and inflicted him with a terrible addiction for a silly board game. He escaped from there back to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, much to his delight. He spent three wonderful years completing his B.Sc in Computer Science at the University of Saskatchewan. He even got honours!

It was at this time that he made a crutial and, unfortunately, incorrect decision. Instead of getting a real job and making some real money and buying a real car, he decided to abandon himself to a life of misery and obtain an M.Sc. After a year of this torture he ran away to the United States to work in Boulder, Colorado for Alex Repenning. At the end of a fantastic summer he took a trip to California for a couple days and then up the west coast. He fell in love with California and freeways.

After returning to Canada he foolishly wasted a couple months with his parents in Edmonton working for a silly flower company (I WASN'T selling flowers! Let's just not go there, k? I was setting up a BBS for them). Returning to his senses, he rushed back to Saskatoon, got a job consulting with Randco Software Corporation, and continued working on his thesis.

At the 1996 Canadian Open chess tournament in Calgary, Tim finally achieved his Master rating. His rating went from 2186 to 2254. He defeated a 2400 and a 2350 player. He had his first opportunity to lose to a GM, namely Canada's champion (and the tournament winner) Kevin Spragget. Despite the loss, Kevin said he played very well making the best possible moves in a losing situation, and was obviously not a 2100 player (wahoo!). His only other losses at the tournament where to two 2300 players who succeeded in cheapo'ing him, and a silly 2000 player who played some kind of opening he called a "dutch" for which Tim felt so sorry he gave him a draw.

Eventually, Tim finished his M.Sc.. Amazing, eh? And you thought he'd never get around to it. Somewhere along the way he learned that sometimes you kinda have to maybe pick a direction and go that way, rather than let fate take you places. I guess that one can be hard to learn sometimes. As in all things, some people deserve credit for helping, and some deserve blame for hindering. But to make a long sad story aweful damn short, there was a happy ending.

Enter Intuit Inc., and the land of stock options! Vague direction and fumbling perseverance finally pay off! Tim enters the BIG LEAGUE! Wahoo! Two months later it's 80 hour weeks and a German product dug outa the ashes. Almost a year goes by and Canada and UK get a product from our wunderchild, then it is back to the German product. But this time Tim is the technical lead on the project, responsible for implementing Euro support. Wowsers. Whodathunk that the European Union would cause a little boy from Saskatchewan so many headaches?

Then I got the itch to play ultimate frisbee in February. Luckily for me, Intuit has offices in California. Even better, they also introduced me to my future wife Kathy who has a smile bigger than the Saskatchewan sky.

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