Besides being the co-founder of DotNetNerds.com...there's more to me than meets the eye (only my friends will see humor in that).
I am what I like to call a “cradle coder.” I’m the kind of person who cuddled with a keyboard instead of a teddy bear . . . the kind of person that spent an entire summer programming an adventure game (for fun) . . . the kind of person that took special pleasure in hacking into the demo computers at the local Radio Shack to run:
10 PRINT “STEVE WUZ HERE”
20 GOTO 10
Then I just walk away laughing to myself. I am a nerd and proud of it.
At a young age, my dad brought home a brand new Commodore 64. It was miraculous device. I could put what looked like a regular audio tape into its tape reader, and in 5, 10, or even 30 minutes . . . I would be off collecting strange energy balls while some unseen entity shot tracking bullets at me (that was known as Jumpman to the historically challenged).
Shortly after the Commodore arrived, my dad subscribed to a magazine Compute Gazette. It had all sorts of programming tidbits and each issue contained one or more complete programs (games usually) you enter line by line by line by line only to find out later you had an error on line 3 (God bless checksum). These games sparked something in me . . . I wanted the pixilated protagonist to be green instead of white.
As the years progressed, so did my skills. Thanks to an online network known as Quantum Link (AOL's daddy), I was able to download games other people had written. Soon, I was writing my own games from the ground up. Granted, they were trivial and crappy, but they were mine.
Moving forward, I found myself thrust into the real world. It was the 90s. The Internet was booming like crazy. I dropped out of college . . . blinded by money. I took up ColdFusion (let’s face it, ASP sucked), and became an official web applications developer. Then . . . someone burst my bubble and I was unemployed. My time spent hoping and praying I’d find a job led me to play around with emerging technologies. When I dove into .NET full force . . . I never looked back.
I graduated from college in 2005 (only took a dozen years, alright!). What can I say, that internet boom in the 90s was VERY seductive. After a decade of shuffling from one programming job to another, I’m finally an official .NET programmer for Avanade.
I’ve a real passion for architecture, since that’s where the guts of any application lay. I learned .NET using C#, but was thrust into the VB.NET by a previous employer. I still code my own stuff in C#, but there isn’t enough of a difference between the two for me to lose precious sleep over (well, for the most part).
I run my own servers (you're looking at one now) and host several sites for friends and family. I mean, I’m not making any money off this stuff. There’s no point in spending any more money on it than I have to.
In March, 2006, I decided I needed a hobby that would get me off the couch. You see, my body was starting to exceed the maximum comfort level for things like planes, trains, and automobiles. A co-worker talked me into joining his Kung-Fu school, and I couldn’t be happier. My health is improving and I can totally kick butt now. Check out my logo on the right for my current belt rank.
Last, but certainly not least, I'm married to a women who is not afraid to call it like she sees it. To quote what she said to me just last night, "You're a geek!!!" I know . . . I know.
Yeah, there's allot of information missing, but I'm not that well-known . . . YET. So I assume anyone who read this far is either EXTREMELY bored or a relative. With that, I shall gid you boodevening.
So that’s me . . . open and exposed . . . out of the server closet.