About This Site

I attended a small elementary school in Clifton, Virginia. I was quiet, shy, and a homebody who couldn't wait to get home after a long day of school to devour a sleeve of Oreos while watching television.

Unlike most of my peers, I didn't invest much time into video games (except for RuneScape, which will always have a special place in my heart). Instead, I was usually surfing the web whilst creating my own digital footprint.

In particular, I created my own computer graphics, partook in message boards (online forums), and even created my own message board for my elementary school classroom so that we could keep in touch when we got home.

In retrospect, it's fitting that I ended up with a career in web development.

I played Little League Baseball starting in my early years of grade school. I traveled around the state of Virginia with my teammates to compete in a variety of tournaments, which heavily influenced my free time and social circles. Baseball practically became a separate lifestyle outside of school.

In high school, I primarily played as a pitcher. On the surface, this might seem like a repetitive and unexciting task, i.e., simply throwing a ball to an opponent. However, I found that there was a strategy and technique behind each pitch (or "throw") that I came to enjoy.

Although baseball was a stressful, time-consuming activity, I walked away with a great group of friends, a good sense of perseverance and discipline, and a quote I still think about to this day: "If you're on time, you're late".

I was what people would probably consider "no fun" in college. I spent a significant amount of time buried in my studies; I was hungry to learn and fascinated with what I was reading. School curriculum finally felt applicable.

At the start of my junior year, we began writing software applications, which I quickly developed a passion for. Creating my own software put me in a state of flow that was borderline therapeutic, and something that I knew I wanted to continue to pursuing.

When searching for my first job out of college, I did everything I could to ensure that I would wake up excited to go to work everyday. For me, this meant finding something that would have me contributing to any semblance of a software application used by people.

Sure enough, I ended up on a team in which I spent my first day happily and willingly staying after work with a colleague to inspect our web application's network traffic, solely to appease my own curiosity and fascination. This memorable moment was when I knew I had gotten what I was after.

Even leading up to college, I knew that I eventually wanted to relocate. Where exactly I wanted to move was always up in the air (although I do recall being content with the idea of living in Oregon), but I had an itch to get out of Virginia and try someplace new.

Two years into my first job, I felt like it was finally time. I deemed Austin, Texas and Phoenix, Arizona as my two candidates. After some phone calls, research, and nerves, I decided to move to Austin, and I couldn't be more happy.

In no particular order, here are some of my favorite things about where I live:

• The people
• Lady Bird Lake Hike & Bike Trail
• Barton Springs Pool
• Coffee scene and culture
• Local music
• Amount of dogs you see throughout the city
• Relatively warmer winters

Although I have a degree in information technology, I've always wanted to peel a layer of the onion back and better understand the fundamental theories and principles of computation. As such, I enrolled at Austin Community College in hopes to enroll in classes in a computer science department (regardless of where it is) in the future.