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Where to begin

Well where to begin, This is my first attempt at a blog so it may be boring, almost contrite at first but in time it will get better so please bear with me.

First a little about me (thank you for humoring me). I am 39 years old, will be 40 in March of 2008, and live way out in the country with my wife (My Angel), my son, 4 dogs, 2 cats and 2 fish. I am what some refer to out here are a "high tech redneck", I may live in the country (simply because I love the solitude and privacy) but that doesn't mean I have to live like a redneck, and lets face it as a "geek" I love my toys. I knew at a very young age that I was destined to be in the world of computers and programming, even way back when computers were, lets say they were scarce to say the least. People knew right off the bat that something was different about me, maybe because in school some of my favorite classes were math (all flavors, Calculus, Geometry, Algebra, then the natural progression into Linear Algebra, Math Theory and so on) and Critical Thinking (not until High School was I offered this little gem of a class).

I was offered an academic scholarship to the University of Georgia and graduated high school when I was only 16. I attended UGA with a major in Computer Science and a minor in Mathematics. It was at UGA where I wrote my first true encryption algorithm (64 bit back then, but in 1986 that was quite an accomplishment). I graduated with a BS in CS when I was but 20 years old, then proceeded to jump right into programming. I worked with Basic, QBasic, Pascal and other popular languages at the time. It wasn't until later in life when I was introduced to Microsoft Technologies, as in the late 80's there were still a fairly unknown company, who knew eh?

Shortly after graduating (roughly in 1995, ok so that was 7 years after, but who's counting) I was throw into the Visual Basic world developing small client/server (not known as that until many years later) applications for several companies. I did some small work with C/C++ back in the day and even though I loved the concepts of OOP and what could be done the companies I worked for required faster turn around times than I could deliver with C and C++ so I was back to VB (starting with VB3 I believe).

Fast forward 12 years and here I am, still a Microsoft Developer, except now with the "creation" of the .Net Framework I can do OOP programming with the fast turn around times clients want and need. I am a Software Engineer for a publicly traded corporation located in Spokane Washington and also run a small family owned Web/Software Development company out of my home (http://www.psychocoder.net). I have few clients as of now, simply because my full-time work makes it hard to find them but I am hoping within the next couple of years to quit working "for" someone and work solely for myself and build my company to what I know it can be.

I am a passionate programmer, thats all I do, when not at work then I'm at home either creating something for a client of developing applications simply to be creating them, to expand my knowledge, to push the envelope of my own ability. I am a die hard geek, programming is what I am it's not what I do, it's not a "job" for me it is a way of life, it is my passion and I don't see myself ever doing anything else. So there you have it, a little about myself, who I am and how I got to be where I'm at today (well at least a high level overview of who I am). Keep an eye on this blog as I will be writing about .Net programming, MS SQL and other technologies.

Thanks for reading

Print | posted on Thursday, July 19, 2007 10:02 PM

Comments on this post

# re: Where to begin

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Glad to have you on board!
Left by Jeff Julian on Jul 20, 2007 5:32 AM

# re: Where to begin

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Welcome to GWB, Richard
Left by Tim Hibbard on Jul 20, 2007 5:34 AM

# re: Where to begin

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Good to have person like you (with so much exp. and passion towards programming) on GWB, welcome..
Left by Manish Agrawal on Jul 22, 2007 1:50 PM

# re: Where to begin

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Good to have person like you (with so much exp. and passion towards programming) on GWB, welcome..
Left by Manish Agrawal on Jul 22, 2007 1:50 PM

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