My journey with computers started when my father bought me an Amiga 500 at four years old. From there I was introduced to my first passion: video games. It was not long before I was spending all of my free time on the computer, playing games like Defender of The Crown, F/A-18 Interceptor, and Star Wars. When I was older, to channel my enthusiasm into something a little more constructive my father wrote a spelling program which I would have to complete every day after school before I could use the computer. This was my first experience with computer programming: looking through the source written in AmigaBASIC I was able to deduce what words were on the list for the day and how to spell them.
Naturally I was found out when my computer spelling performance did not match my school grades. But nevertheless, I was fascinated that this collection of symbols and instructions could be combined in ways to make a computer do what I like. As I grew older, I would experiment with writing simple text adventure games in BASIC, often writing code on notebook paper when I was not allowed to use the family computer. My career in writing software really started to progress in college, where my job working as a helpdesk technician and class projects gave me an opportunity to work in a wide breadth of technologies; from building games in the then popular XNA framework for the X-Box 360, to building web applications.
I strongly believe in mentoring those that come behind you can carve time out of my schedule to teach on a variety of technical topics I am knowledgeable about. This can range from teaching intern's at work the basics of git, demonstrating software patterns to my work colleagues, and giving career and life advice to undergrad students working at my first job, The HUB at Clayton State University.
At heart I am a tinkerer; I love pulling back the curtain and seeing how things tick and feel uneasy with things that I do not understand. This is not just true with my professional work, but it extends to my hobbies as well. I love driving cars and visualizing all of the parts of a vehicle working together. I have taken apart and put back together old Mazda RX-7's more times than I care to count using some of the same machinist's tools my grandfather used in the 1940's. As a huge fan of cars, you can find me participating at driving events several times a year and have driven at many of the well-known tracks in the southeastern U.S. My idea of a relaxing time is a drive on some good roads, or carving up apexes on a track, even having done so in Europe from time to time. These days I live in Midtown Atlanta with my lovely wife, son, and dog where we can be found getting up to things, mostly kid related, in any of the great green spaces of this city.
Some of my other hobbies include:
- Videogaming
- Board / tabletop gaming
- Travel
- Running and cycling
