My first "all nighter" was Christmas night 1981, when I spent all night learning BASIC on my brand new Vic-20 computer. I've been fascinated with computers ever-since.
Although I graduated from the University of Colorado with a liberal art's degree (Religious Studies), I've always owned and used a computer. Professionally, I've been in the IT field since 1997. After a six-month contract as a Front-End Contract Web Developer for Allscripts, I moved to a Full-Time Web and UI/UX Developer for Trinidad Benham. Prior to both of those I spent sixteen years as a Senior Professional Services Engineer, Front-end Web Developer, and Implementation Engineer for Olive Software, and before that I taught Cisco classes (CCNA and CCDA) for the now-defunct Oxford Lane. In the interim between Oxford Lane and Olive, I taught myself JavaScript by building a web-based computer game, Zane's Tower.
Web Development is a passion of mine. Over the years I've picked up a great number of skills ( HTML5, CSS3, jQuery, Bootstrap, Angular, React, Node, etc) and am continuing to explore new technologies. The purpose of having the most tools in your toolbox is so you can determine the best tool for the job; some technologies, as cool as they may be, may not be suited for the task at hand. Trying to use the shiniest technology just to use it is akin to using a hammer on a screw: it'll get the job done, but is far from optimal.
I am currently employeed as a Senior Front-End and UI/UX Developer for Trinidad Benham Corporation, which produces Beans, Rice and Aluminum Foil. I am part of a team working to move some of TBC's antiquated management applications to web-based, utilizing React front-end and .NET Core/SQL Server backend. This is a sampling of the types of projects we have completed since I started in 2018:
From 2002 to 2017, I was employeed by Olive Software, providing PDF to XML conversion, digital replica editions, and archiving to publishers and libraries around the world. Starting as the fourth US employee, I initially traveled the world training clients on Olive's "XML Distiller" software and setting them up with self-hosted Olive servers. Now, Olive is primarily a SaaS provider, and I have implemented and supported Olive's hosted clients with their digital editions, as well as continued to support the few self-hosted clients Olive has. Below are some highlights of my work with Olive:
In addtion to my work with TBC and Olive, I have also completed many other professional-grade web development projects: