Background

I'm a odd kind of guy. Most kids start off wanting to be a fireman when they're growing up. Me, I wanted to be an electrical engineer. When I was 6. Like I said: odd. From 6 to 9 I was busy etching circuit boards on the family room table. Staining various table cloths with the ferric chloride chemistry. Not that I got many working things at that age, but that's what I wanted to do. I was also a loner for a lot of my growing up. My parents weren't really together a lot. My dad var variously in Florida or California mainly. He didn't really like Cleveland a whole lot at all. When he was in Florida we visited him a few times driving down in a Honda Civic. My mom was busy with work and taking care of her parents and generally being a nervous wreck. I learned that if I wanted to get something done it was my job to do it.

Computers

When I was 9 my parents got me a TI99/4a computer. That changed everything. Now I wanted to be a programmer. Haven't really looked back since then. A litany of computers followed:

  1. TI99/4a
  2. Commodore 64
  3. Commodore 128
  4. Commodore Amiga 500
  5. Borrowed 286 clone
  6. 386/25MHz
  7. 486/33MHz
  8. Pentium/90MHz
  9. Pentium II
  10. Pentium III
  11. Athlon X64 4400+ (2.2GHz)
  12. MacBook (White 2008) (quickly given to Ennie)
  13. MacBook Pro (Late 2008)
  14. iMac (Late 2009) Quad core Intel Core i7/2.8GHz
  15. MacBook Air (Late 2010)
  16. iMac (Late 2012) Core i7 @ 3.4 GHz with 32GB memory
  17. MacBook Pro Retina (Late 2013)
  18. Home-brew Windows 7 Core i5 running the trainer

There might be one or two I'm forgetting... but that's my collection over time.

The days of the BBS

When I was around 13 I found out about modems. I had the Commodore 64 at the time and I borrowed a 300bpd modem from school. I quickly outgrew that and convinced my mom to get me the 1200bps one to replace it. (I still have have modem) By this time I had my own phone line since I was talking on the phone all the time like the proverbial teenage girl. A slow download later and I was the sysadmin of Ground Zero BBS. I met a lot of people through that. It really helped bring me out of my shell. I think this deserves it's own page.

School

...sigh... this is mainly a low-point. I went to grade school at St. Gregory in South Euclid. It was meh at it's best. High school was split between Benedictine for two years and a day and Cleveland Heights for the balance of the two years. After that I went to Cleveland State for four quarters and OSU for another quarter. It was a frustrating experience. I wasn't learning much at all. I stopped that before my loans got out of hand. It was a good decision.

Work

C3 - Cyberspace Construction Company

NetForce Development

Progressive

GTBSI - Global Technology Business Systems, Inc.

Cardinal Commerce

Comparison Market

...which became Insurance.com

...which became QuinStreet

SageQuest

Amazon.com