About Me

Pepe Takes My Photo Hi. I’m Al Billings and this is my blog…well, one of them, at least. I cover a lot of different topic area here, which can seem very confusing to people.

First off, I’m a professional tech guy. I work as a QA Engineer (aka “Software Tester”) at the Mozilla Corporation in the Bay Area of California down in Silicon Valley. The Mozilla Corporation (which is often called “MoCo”) is the proud creator of the Firefox browser in cooperation with the larger Mozilla Community.

Previously, I worked at Microsoft for almost nine years doing QA and, later, customer facing work with feedback and blogs as a project manager for the Internet Explorer team. Back in the early 1990s, I began my career in tech support and worked my way up through being a webmaster at Sprynet before shifting to QA in 1996. All of my professional experience in technology has been in the space of the Internet, Web Browsers, and Community work.

I’ve been on the Internet since back in 1989 when we had to hack into a local dial-up at the University and work out from there through telnet via intermediate university unix boxes. I once ran a UUCP node, Pagan.UUCP, back in the day in order to get Usenet and e-mail from the earlier net. I also ran two different Seattle area modem-based bulletin board systems in the late 80’s and early 90’s: Revelstone and The Sacred Grove.

This is my professional career and the places where it touches on my geeky youth.

Outside of my work, I’ve also, until recently, been a graduate student finishing my Master of Art’s degree in Humanities. I was just awarded my degree on December 31, 2007, so my slog is over (for now). My concentration in the program was Philosophy, specifically in the space of Philosophy of Religion. My recently completed thesis was within that context studying Western Esotericism, focusing on the late 19th century “Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn” and its beliefs and teachings concerning the nature and structure of the human soul.

I am considering whether or not to proceed into a PhD program. I may have had enough of school in this lifetime since a PhD program would probably necessitate the quitting of my job and current career because of the time and energy requirements. If I do join a doctoral program, my plan is to move away from Western Esotericism as a focus and more into American Religion, specifically Buddhism in the West. On that note, I will mention that I am a Buddhist practitioner with a background in a number of different schools but mostly focused on the Tantric Buddhism of Tibet and East Asia.

I recently started a sporadic podcast, Ex Templo, at extemplo.org on matters relating to spirituality in the 21st century in a pluralistic world. While I’ve done a couple of interviews for it, I have not focused on it as much as I’d like. I expect to do much more with it in 2008 now that school is out of the way for now.

My mother is a well known witch and Thelemite in the Salt Lake City area but I grew up Roman Catholic until my late teens. Go figure. I have a long earlier background in both Neopaganism and Western Esotericism. While I am not directly involved in such anymore, many of my friends still are involved. This previous involvement is the root of my academic interest in these areas and also in the American religious experience, especially in the 21st century. I’m pretty happy, generally, to attend and witness a variety of religious ceremonies because I find the spirituality of people to be an interesting part of life.

I’m on the board of directors (which sounds grand, doesn’t it, but isn’t necessarily) of two small religious non-profit organizations. One is the Buddhist temple with which I am affiliated and the other is a Neopagan organization in Utah started by my mother which focuses on chaplaincy and care-giving work there.

I live in the Oakland, California with my wife, R, to whom I was married in 2004. I have a twelve year old daughter from my previous marriage who lives in Seattle with her mother. I was born and raised almost entirely in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest, attending the local University and working for the local Megacorp.

If you need to contact me, e-mail me through ‘albill’ at this domain. (Be warned, I get a lot of e-mail and may not immediately respond to unsolicited contacts.)

Al and Mom
Making my momma proud!