about

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Hi. I began my humble career in tech when I was 7 or 8 years old. I worked as the family VCR programmer. I connected VCRs to TVs then programmed them to auto-record (back before there was DVR). I was clever enough to pick up the user manual when cords & buttons didn't seem to do what they should. To my family, I was a VCR hero.

When I wasn't programming the clock or recorder on VCRs I was in school. My elementary school was part of a technology pilot program in the mid 1980's. We were lucky to get a set of 15 or 20 Apple II computers. We had a computer lab full of these giants & spent considerable time learning how to use them. I remember being especially good at a puzzle game called Gertrude's Secrets.

We learned a little bit of computer programming back then. I was really awful at BASIC. I could make rectangles and squares but not much else. My syntax was almost always wrong. LOGO was a lot more fun, though I wasn't too good with it either. I could type well, use a word processor and a database program no problem. During my elementary years, I never once considered a career in tech.

In high school I concentrated on music, not math and science. I could still type well & use office programs but coding of any kind was far from my mind. I didn't understand why anyone would want to study computer science.

In the mid 2000's I discovered the wonders of website design. The web was still young and a little ugly. My original career plan was freelance writing. Before I could really get started in my new career, I was mailed a review copy of an html editor. It came with plenty of starter templates (most built with tables, not CSS). I discovered html was going to be pretty easy for me to pick up. I kept practicing until one day I got my first freelance web design project. Not long after that first design client, I got a full time job as a web developer with a commercial printing firm. I've learned a lot in the last 6 years. I worked with html tables but never really liked them. CSS was a major discovery for me. I was so happy to separate design from layout. I poured over the designs at the CSS Zen Garden, learning what I could.

I still work for the aforementioned commercial printing firm as the lead web developer. I freelance here whenever I can. Sometimes I write something moderately useful. I enjoy developing WordPress websites, typography, reading, and writing.