I was born in 1956 in Izhevsk, USSR. I graduated high school in 1974 in Tambov, USSR and from the Tambov Institute of Chemical Engineering (now Tambov State Technical University) in 1979, with a BS equivalent. Starting in October 1979 I worked full-time as an IT specialist. I moved to the Moscow region in 1980. Until 1990 I worked for different companies in the Soviet military industrial complex. I created a small software business in 1991, which failed in 1993. I worked for Oracle Corp in 1995 in Moscow. In 1996 I moved to the US, where I continued working as an IT professional, which is still my main source of income. I became a US citizen in 2006 and started investing in 1998. I had an extremely successful 1998 and 1999, very bad 2000 and 2001, then recovered. I mostly invest in what I know, which means mostly high tech companies, but wouldn't discard any opportunity. I'm trying to make my performance better and share my thoughts in my blog Muddling Investor (http://muddlinginvestor.blogspot.com/).