Timeline of My Life

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I asked my girlfriend of 5 years to marry me, and she said yes!

Began work at KLOutdoor (now Hemisphere Design Works) as a Web and Desktop Software Developer despite having no C# or Web experience. This marks the start of my experience and learning professional development.

First major development released internally to the company. An internal web application to manage purchase orders, engineering change requests, shipping docks, reports, machine scheduling, trailers, and company projects, while offering realtime updates and analytics.

Moved away from home and family and moved in with my girlfriend.

Having my past interest in medicine, I took up a position as a pharmacy technician while looking for development jobs.

The end of my time at university came and went pretty quietly.

Landed a seasonal job between school years and on breaks as a table games dealer at a casino. The most enjoyable job I'd had up to this point in time.

After 2 years at university, I decided that biochemistry wasn't for me when my enjoyment so heavily revolved around technology and software.

Graduated High School as Valedictorian with a 4.x GPA and a member of National Honor Society. At this point in my life, software development was just a thought in the back of my mind when my main interest at the time was medicine.

Off to college I went, starting my major in Biochemistry at the university where the computer was born.

Another stocking position at a different grocery store. Not anymore enjoyable than the first, but a very similar experience.

Worked as a lifeguard for a season to get some fun in the sun and earn a bit of extra cash to afford.

The release of a game that would monopolize the rest of my high school free time almost by itself.

An accident in the kitchen lead to a house fire that would claim a good portion of the kitchen and leave smoke damage throughout the upstairs. Fortunately, everyone got out unharmed, but it was a trying time and something most people never expect to happen to them.

Shortly after turning 14, I got my first job, in retail, stocking at a grocery store. It wasn't fun or exciting, but it did help me understand the value of a dollar when making $7.25 an hour and working at most 3 hours a day on weekdays, 8 on weekends, and less than 30 hours a week.

It was around this time that I got into making maps for Warcraft 3 and dabbled in writing/modifying scripts for various other games. The Warcraft 3 map maker introduced me to a very interesting and limited, yet powerful, way of development that was incredibly fun. Controlling characters and plugging in logic and events was satisfying and I'd continue building maps for a couple of months.

With the somewhat recent release of Diablo 2 and my growing interest in computer games, my dad developed a program to disable the use of a computer after a certain time of day. Like any good tester, it was my job to break it. This included digging through source files for the password, changing the local time, disconnecting from the network to reset the application, force closing it in task manager, and several other ways.

Around this time, I was introduced to games at a point in my life where I could learn and progress through them. I remember watching my brother play Zelda on the NES and I started playing games while at my grandparents.

The first day of my existence and the beginning of my journey. Not much to say here, but it is a fairly important day to my life.