Here's an easy-to-read (but long-winded) account of my professional history. If you're after terse, formal info, see my resume.
I started programming in the mid '80s but didn't get paid for it until the end of high school (in the early '90s). Up until that point, I mowed lawns and worked at restaurants. I was a cook, a dish-washer, and a waiter. I prefered dish-washing because I got to eat the leftovers. ;)
In 1991 I headed off to college (William and Mary). My parents helped pay for tuition and living expenses so that I could focus on studying. Instead of bookworming my life away, I immersed myself in music. I became a DJ, recorded my own music, and bought lots of tapes and CDs. Lots.
To fund my music habit, I needed extra money. I didn't want to beg my parents for "fun money", so I worked for the college as an "office assistant". This meant I stuffed envelopes and shredded paper. I got in the habit of listening to music on my walkman the whole time. The downside was that I got tired of my tapes faster, and had to keep buying more.
Soon, I upgraded to a brainier job with the college: programming. The money was better, and the work was more intellectually satisfying; an example task was to write survey tabulation software from scratch. I much preferred programming to stuffing envelopes. Plus, I was able to work in my room, which meant I could listen to music full-blast! Yay! This was my first telecommuting job.
During summer and winter breaks, I worked at my dad's office (Simpson Weather Associates) as a lab assistant and programmer. Working with Dad was great, because he's informal, clear, and always considering the big picture. I got to write lots of neat programs which turned atmospheric sensor data into pretty images. Train cars, factory pollution, lidar-measured winds: they sound boring, but on screen it's attractive stuff! Plus, Dad actually used my programs to make (and support) his decisions, which in turn helped people. That was exciting for me, knowing that my programming efforts were being used to help humanity.
Note: The next few paragraphs come from my old "Boeing" page. They're very formal (read: precise and dry) compared to the rest of this page. I don't know if I'm gonna be shifting this page in a more or less formal direction in the future. For now, please bear with the change in tone!
I was hired by Rockwell International in July 1995, shortly after I graduated from William and Mary. In late 1996, our division became part of Boeing.
I started off in the Electromagnetic Engineering (EMENG) team at Washington Engineering Operations in Crystal City, Virginia, about 5 miles from downtown Washington D.C. Our EMENG Team was contracted to by the U.S. Navy to develop tools for computer-aided ship development. Our primary focus was on topside EM interference and blockage patterns.
During my second year I spent the majority of my time working with the Fiber Optic Data Multiplexing System (FODMS) team in Anaheim, California. FODMS is responsible for creating and managing FDDI networks that enable fast and reliable communication between positionally and functionally diverse ship components.
My third largest project was to assist Seal Beach's Theater Ballistic Missile Defense (TBMD) program in preparing for and assembling presentations for military officials. This task included writing software for porting data between existing applications and databases.
I also spent quite a bit of time developing, porting, managing, and documenting various utilities that helped automate configuration management tasks. Additionally, I designed and managed internal web pages for the different groups (EMENG, FODMS, TBMD).
Hey! You still awake? Yeah, I know. All those acronyms make the eyelids heavy.
Okay, I'll translate: My first "real" job was with Rockwell International, which later merged with Boeing. My group studied electromagnetic interference on naval ship topsides. We also simulated missile interceptions and worked to improve ships' computer networks. My focus was on organizing and presenting the information that the other engineers were discovering. I developed interfaces which helped our employees and clients visualize complex data and make decisions. So it was like what I was doing for Dad: developing tools for scientists.
There were a couple downsides working for Boeing. For one thing, it was in Northern Virginia. I don't like Northern Virginia. I don't like cities, and Northern Virginia is one big city. Another thing is that my job required me to spend several months in Los Angeles. Remember what I said about cities?
City life wore on me. I got sick of concrete. And crowds. And roaches. I had tons of roaches in my apartment! One night I killed 23. Bad bad roach problem in Northern Virginia. LA wasn't as bad, although I did find a scorpion in my bathroom.
Something good actually came out of being shipped to LA (besides the per dium). I was living in a hotel, with no friends, no computer, and no music! I therefore had to change my habits. I found a nearby college with a piano practice room, so I started rollerblading and jogging to the college in order to work on songs. Also, my hotel had a pool, so I swam laps almost every night for a while. And guess what? I started losing weight! All that jogging, rollerblading, and swimming dropped me from 180 to 135 lbs in just a few months.
Getting in physical shape inspired me to push myself in other areas. I started buying "study" books, about science and computers and writing. I bought a used laptop, taught myself HTML, and created my first web page (in 1996). Then I created another page, and another... And pretty soon I was running online discussion lists, organizing tribute albums for my favorite musician (Julian Cope), and creating pages about my own music...
And then suddenly I was yanked back to Virginia for some high-priority projects there. Luckily, my personal-improvement momentum persisted. I kept exercising (and am pedalling an exercise bike as I type this!), studying after work, and creating web pages. All these extra efforts resulted in pride-inducing accomplishments, which I loved!
Meanwhile, though, I was suffering in Northern Virginia. Nothing could change my mind about the city, which I still hated. I wanted desperately to get away to somewhere greener. The months of isolation in a hotel room had made me yearn for intellectual buddies, but the guys at my work were all much older than me and had families, so I couldn't relate to them.
I therefore decided to go back to school. I figured that in an academic environment I could formalize my self-improvement efforts and hang out with some geeks. Plus, many of the scientists at Boeing had multiple Master's degrees, and I wanted to get myself one too.
My business trips to LA had inspired me to do some more travelling, so I left work a couple months early and went on my first big solo adventure, to Alaska. For info about that trip, see my travel journal.
After Alaska, I returned to Virginia, this time Charlottesville (my home town), and started grad school at the University of Virginia. I was in the Computer Science department, which paid my tuition and gave me enough living expenses to cover rent, food, and a handful of CDs each month. In return, I worked as an research assistant (RA) and teaching assistant (TA). My main areas of focus were information retrieval and software engineering. You can read more about my grad school days on my school page... after finishing this one...
Grad school came and went quickly. I learned a lot, mostly about software engineering. I also created several more web sites, mostly for bands I liked. I overhauled my dad's site, which earned me a few more bucks to spend on CDs. Managing all these web sites started consuming more and more of my free time, but people kept telling me I was really good at it, so I kept doing it.
I spent most of my childhood in Charlottesville, and quickly got tired of living there again. I had a dream to move to the Pacific Northwest... Bellingham, WA in particular. Like Charlottesville, Bellingham was a medium-sized college town. Unfortunately, it didn't have a PhD program. However, I loved it and still wanted to move there. So as soon as I got my Master's Degree, I hit the road. I did a quick East Coast trip, and then headed to Oregon and Bellingham.
By this time it was late 1999. Bellingham was beautiful (as always), but I couldn't find any programming jobs. So I toured Canada and Alaska for the second time. There were no jobs up there either, and it was soooooo cold (by this time it was early November)! Eventually I gave up on moving out there and tried to focus on having a fun vacation. After Thanksgiving, I returned to Charlottesville.
I worked for Dad again a couple months, which I enjoyed, but I got tired of living in my parents' basement. I decided to get a full-time job and a cheap apartment, save up a bunch of money, and then try moving west again in a year or so.
Pretty quickly I found a job at a local company called Boxer Learning. They made online math tutorials. It was a great match for me, especially in the beginning when the company was expanding its product line. I learned tons about web development and got to work with some really smart and artistic folks. I also felt useful, since I helped the company organize and document their development process, and created an intranet for them. It was a nice feeling.
After a year or so, however, the company changed. They dramatically expanded their workforce, moved to a huge, impersonal office building, and then for some reason started to run out of money. Soon after, there was a round of layoffs. We had to stop developing new tutorials and focus on database optimization and alternative delivery formats (e.g., CD). I found this work to be extremely boring. Also, I was itching to leave Charlottesville again.
Fortunately, I had saved up enough money to move to the West, even without a job. I told my boss I planned to relocate. He wanted me to stay with the company, so offered to let me telecommute from wherever I went. Cool! So I took a month off to focus on music and then hit the road again.
This time, my trip was a success. It was a lot more fun than the cold 1999 trip! I found an apartment in Bellingham and then drove all the way to Alaska. When I got back down to Bellingham, I flew back to Virginia, and my sister helped me drive a moving truck to Bellingham (so I ended up driving the same 3000+ mile stretch of road twice that summer!).
As soon as I found myself in Bellingham again, life was happy! I loved the area, and I loved telecommuting. I worked part time, and the time difference meant I was done with work at around 2pm. This left me plenty of time to work on music and go outside. Life was great!
Unfortunately, the company kept sliding downhill. They laid off more people. The atmosphere got gloomy and tense. Two of the other programmers left Charlottesville for the west coast, and started telecommuting like me. The remaining techies formed one social circle (which was inundated with stress from the dying company), and we formed our own little isolated bubbles. It became hard for us to relate to each other, and personalities started clashing.
More layoffs. This time, all of the part time people had to leave, and this included me. So I found myself unemployed for a couple months. To be honest, it was a huge relief, and I had lots of stuff to keep me busy: a vacation in Belize, digitizing all my photos, finishing up several musical projects, and moving to a new apartment with my girlfriend.
Shortly after I moved, a new job fell in my lap, and what a beaut it was! Not just "was" but "is"; I still work there!
The company is CareerPerfect. They specialize in writing resumes for people. I'm the lead/only developer. A system guy manages the servers, a graphic designer creates the images, the bosses and business manager handle the text, and I do the coding: PHP, MySQL, Javascript, XHTML, CSS, etc. It's lots of responsibility, but my bosses and coworkers are great! Plus, I get to work at home! :) :) :)
So that's where I am now: happily employed, working with great people. I still make music, work on on web pages, and study in my off hours, always trying to improve. And I'm always exercising! (yes, I am still pedalling...)
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