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The Short Auto-Biography
I was born on June 20th of 1978 in the city of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. My formative years were uneventful. *Laughs* Well, I am sure my mother would disagree with that, so I will share a few anecdotes and let you decide for yourself.
When I was around 5 or 6 years of age I became a plague carrier; don't worry I got better. As you should know, nearly every child gets the chicken pox. Well, I happened to catch it, unknown to my parents, on our way to Disneyland. So we go to the theme park, walk around all day, and ride on all the rides. As the day drew to an end, my parents noticed that I was dragging behind and not being a normal child with too much energy. My mother, the caring mother she is, feels my forehead and determines I probably have a fever. So off to the Disneyland nurse we go. I didn't skip but my sister might have. The nurse takes one look at me, quickly pronouncing that I have the chicken pox at its most contagious point. So I single handedly exposed everyone at Disneyland to the child's plague of chicken pox. And once those people went home, their children probably spread it throughout their schools.
After the plague incident, a few years passed with nothing of note really happening. At least nothing that a child would note. I have two recollections of this next incident. Well, I have what I remember... and then what my sister has finally admitted happened. I trust her story more, although this may seem odd until you have read the accounts. What I remember is that I was lying in the grass looking up at the sky, a girl my own age, which I believe was around 9 to 10, lying beside me. Then all I see is my sister with a metal baseball bat standing above me, then a pain as the baseball bat hits my head. I don't really remember anything else about this except the big bruise on my forehead for the next week. What my sister says happened is that I was lying on the grass, but the person next to me was a guy around my same age. My sister did come over and strike me with a metal baseball bat, which knocks me out. Once I wake up my sister is telling me I am superman and nothing can hurt me *it was a very good pep talk*. We walk the block home and my sister tells my mother that I was standing too close behind the person swinging the baseball bat, and it was an accident. In my dazed condition I agree with her. My mother, believing her children, only found out what really happened this past christmas (2004). She was, to say the least, quite surprised.
After this, I was feeling pretty invulnerable. I mean nothing could hurt me, because I was superman. *Laugh* Ah, the foolishness of youth. This happened while my grandmother was watching us while our parents went on a trip to the bahamas. Told from my grandmother's perspective, this is what happened. She walks out onto the back porch to see how nicely the kids (my sister and I) are playing with each other. What she sees almost gives her a heart attack. My sister is calmly swinging on the swing. She is getting a bit of height, but not dangerously high. Then she looks down at the ground, where I am lying calmly looking up as the swing swings a foot above my nose, and my sisters feet only missing me by a few inches. My grandmother, of course, put a quick stop to our fun. Now I don't remember this as well as my sister, but she swears that I had insisted on trying it. I do believe I would have, so it is probably true.
So on to the teen years. I went to Kennedy High school. My freshman year I joined the basketball team. Even though I am built tall, I wasn't that great at the game. I stuck it out until the end of the season and had fun while playing but didn't go for the team in the following years. Also my freshman year I joined the mock trial team. I was dropped from that team, too many members and I wasn't one of the better ones. Ah well, that team was really good so I never really felt bad about it. High school is also when I was introduced to role playing games, which became my recreation of choice for a long while. It was cheap, and I got to be around good friends. I could probably tell gaming stories for a few weeks, but I will not bore you with all of them. Instead here are a few amusing anecdotes about things that I did in high school.
The toaster incident. Well, one of my really good friends in high school, Teri, and I decided that we wanted to see how easy it was to draw people into a conversation that they had no clue as to what it was about. We would talk in very vague terms, much like "I can't believe she did that." One of us would look at someone nearby and say, "yeah, but can you believe how he reacted, and with the toaster?" Strangely, we found out that people would join in, giving their two cents not knowing what the heck was going on. Not only that, they would keep the conversation going with vague statements of their own.
Teri and I had lots of fun plans. We never actually did this one, but we planned it out, just never really got the chance. We were going to dress up in overalls, overly large straw hats and probably some kind of flannel shirt. Black out a tooth or two, and go walking around the mall. While walking we were going to state things such as, "Yic Yic, I's be from Iowa, cause I grows corn, yic yic." *Note: this must be said in the worst hillbilly accent possible* Oddly everyone else I have told this to has looked at me and said, "Don't ever say that again."
My other really good friend, Tish, and I got out of school early one day and decided to go to the mall for some lunch. While sitting around we were tossing ideas around of what to do with the rest of the day. She mentioned that she would like to TP her boyfriend's house. I mentioned that TP-ing was too...Well, unoriginal. So we tossed around a few of the other ideas we had heard about, forking or spooning the yard. But again those are things we had heard of. So we decided to 'gift wrap' their front porch. So we went to the store and bought a bunch of aluminum foil. We rushed over to his place and went to work on the porch. We were about 1/2 done when his roomies came by the house. We quickly explained what we were doing, they laughed with us, and went on their merry way. We quickly finish the porch, and man was it neat looking. Oh, I should also mention that this was done before the fad of tin foiling someone's office or house. *Laugh* We might have actually inspired it.
College Years:
Well, when the time for college came around, I had decided I wanted to be a genetics major. So I applied to the University of Iowa, got accepted, and started their program. Unfortunately, they require chemistry for that major. I found out something very important that semester... I hate chemistry. So it was back to the question of what do I want to do with my life. I decided I wanted to work with computers. So after that semester was over, I went to Kirkwood community college to save money. Which was probably the best thing I could have done. I learned more in the small classes at Kirkwood than in the large ones at the university. After taking care of almost all the general education classes, and a single class in programming, not to mention I had gotten the maximum number of transferable credits, I decided to continue my education at Iowa State University. After 2 and 1/ 2 years of mostly computer classes I had a diploma from ISU in Computer Science. Between my times of intense study I started taking the martial arts with Grand Master Yong Chin Pak. I started in Tae Kwon Do, then joined Hapkido, and finally after putting it off a while joined Judo. I once asked Master Pak which martial art he liked the best. He laughed, looked at the uniform I was wearing, and said, "Right now Tae Kwon Do, ask tomorrow it will be Hapkido or Judo."
After college it was time for the first job search. I got very lucky, or if you like, I was just at the right place with the right skills. I found my place for the next two years with the Brendel Group at Iowa State University. This was a great job, because I was able to play... I mean work with clusters of computers and continue my education on the linux platform. I also learned some nice skills with web development and databases. Oh, and somewhere mixed in there was something about windows support and actual work.
The Jacksonville Move:
My girlfriend decided that she wished to get a PhD from Mayo clinic so I said goodbye to my nice support job and followed her to Jacksonville, Florida. After a while I was hired on to help move computers for the Citi-bank office relocation. After just a short month as a grunt moving computers and monitors I was promoted to Team Lead. Which really just meant I now had more responsibility while still expected to get the same amount of work done. That project eventually ended and I found myself employed as the webmaster of Chiroeco.com and Massagemag.com. Over the next 2 and a half years I would support those two sites, create tools for them, start up two sub sites (studentdc.com and futurelmt.com), and do all the system support for the office. Needless to say I was very busy.
Again my girlfriend decided it was time to move on with life. So now we find ourselves in the lovely city of Verona, Wi. I talked my boss into letting me try the work from home option. I thought it was going great. I was getting amazing amounts of work done. My supervisor was happy with what I was doing. Unfortunately the owner has decided that he would like all the IT/Web work on location. So now I am on the job search again.
Shameless Plug: If you are looking for someone who learns quickly, is easy to get along with, and works hard, look over my Resume and get in contact with me.