Who am I? I'm a Georgia Tech graduate, an Eagle Scout, a husband, a photographer, a programmer, a black belt, a musician, an engineer, an animal lover, a tech enthusiast, a businessman, and an outdoorsman.
I started learning how to program in elementary school on my Atari 800XL. As a freshman in high school, I received formal training in an AP Computer Science class (PASCAL). Using my new language, I designed half of a primitive instant messaging program. The other half was written by a friend of mine in QBasic. The concept was simple: open a file over the network, write a message, and close the file. The receiver would monitor the file and open it upon modification.
A Computer Engineering degree from Georgia Tech was an obvious choice for me. I enjoyed programming, but was more interested in working with the hardware. For my senior design project, my team and I converted a radio-controlled car to an autonomously driven robot. We designed a rudimentary processor and programmed it to control the servos for steering and acceleration. Two sonic transducers mounted on the front were used to signal an interrupt from the determined path. As soon as the path was clear, the programmed course would resume.
Graduating from Georgia Tech into a slow job market, I decided to join the family business. During the following four years, I experienced running a wholesale business. I started out taking and shipping orders, and worked my way up to managing several employees, determining marketing strategy, and analyzing inventory movement. When I decided to leave and pursue my career in engineering, I knew that I needed to document my day-to-day data management and operation protocols. The resulting notebook topped 100 pages of how-to text and screen captures.
Recently, I have been using a distribution of Linux, Kubuntu, on my main computer. I've done the essentials, installed an ftp server, mounted a few FAT32 drives from my Windows machine, and allowed for secure shell remote access. It has given me an opportunity to jump back into programming and computer administration head first. And I love it!
