If you are reading this, you are probably wondering, “Who is this guy, and why should I listen to him?” The following should be a fairly painless read giving you my history.

My first experience with a computer was back in the early 1980s when my dad bought a Kaypro II while doing his Masters work. I was too young to do anything serious with it, so I mostly played a ASCII character based King Kong type game.

In elementary school I was exposed to the wonder known as the Apple IIe. Oh those were great days when we got to go to the computer lab and play Oregon Trail!

Later in elementary school the computer lab teacher showed us the newest machine, the Macintosh Classic. I still remember to this day her talk about the 3.5″ floppy compared to the 5.25″ floppy, and how she could toss a 3.5″ on the floor and it’d still be fine but couldn’t do that with the 5.25″.

Jump forward a few years and my dad had purchased an Intel 286 DOS based computer, and eventually an Intel 486DX DOS based computer. We also had a dot-matrix printer, so I started typing papers for school in WordPerfect. The computer had a modem — all of 9600 baud — and I remember dad going on bulletin boards and talking about Prodigy. Sometime around 1995 we got dial-up through my mom’s work. I remember going online — still on a DOS system mind you — to look at the Letterman Top 10 lists.

For college I decided to go to George Fox University. One of the things about George Fox — which was as standout then as it is now — is that since the early 1990s they have given a new computer to every incoming freshman to use during their time at GFU. When the student graduates they get to keep the computer. The computer I got was a Mac Performa 6200CD running Mac OS 7.5, and later upgraded to OS 8. Man I played a lot of Warcraft II on that computer. GFU was all Mac at that point, except for the Computer Science department.

During the summer of 1998 GFU switched to a dual-platform campus, and I changed my major to Management and Information Science. Because I’d be in the CS program I ditched my Performa for an AMD K6-2 based machine. I used this computer for 3-4 years until I built one from scratch. That was very satisfying to hand select all of the components, and then put them all together to make this amazing machine. More recently, I was one of the first to purchase an Intel-based Mac Mini for home, and have loved every moment of it.

At work I’m a half-time DBA/programmer/operations manager for the Office of Admissions at my alma mater, and my official title is Director of Systems/Operations. The software in the office requires me to be on Windows, since I’m working on Goldmine, SQL Server 2000, and Visual Studio 2003.  The other half-time I’m a programmer analyst/system administrator in IT at said alma mater.  I am primarily a Windows/AD admin, but also work on Exchange and other assorted systems.  We are also beginning a PeopleSoft implementation, which will be exciting for sure.

Outside of my normal employment, I do some freelance website development. I love working with WordPress so much that I inevitably end up using it for most of what I do. I’ve created a handful of themes, and have dipped my toes into writing plugins, but nothing too serious. This is more of a hobby for me at this point, what with one son, and another child on the way.

Thanks for coming by, and paying attention to my tech dronings.