Wait… you actually want to know more about me?

I have a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Cal State Long Beach in 2008 (Yes, I know odd for a code monkey).

In 2004, I went to work for USC on the Tactical Language Project. The idea was to put enough language and culture behind every American trigger finger in Iraq and Afghanistan. By 2005, the project was so successful that we spun it out into it’s own company- Alelo, Inc. We won some pretty fancy awards while I was there, but an even cooler accomplishment was having a US Marine unit, which heavily trained on our software, credit us as contributing factor in suffering a 0 casualty rate during their deployment in Iraq. That felt good.

Then my dad died in 2007. That sucked. Frustration, grief and burn-out led to a fairly rough 18 months, during which I finished my Bachelor’s degree and amicably parted ways with the folks at Alelo at the end of 2008.

I spent most of 2009 and 2010 helping small companies restructure their workflow, getting leaner, and embracing ways that Software as a Service and the internet would change their businesses. Eventually this turned into a small marketing and web development agency called Strategy Partners. We built quite a few very neat, very boring things, that helped our clients generate more revenue off their internet presence. A couple of those are still running and making those clients money 10 years later. This is something I’m quite proud of.

Client services was a bunch of fun (it really was), but you get tired of the whole 30-60-90-maybe? invoicing cycle. It really does suck when a client just decides to not make the final milestone payments, and you’ve got to go down the whole “is it even worth it to I sue them for this much of the outstanding contract?”

In 2013, a client offered me the opportunity to do all the Web Development and Content/Production coordination at a startup called My Sports Mentor. This was a blast. I built the first version of the platform, and learned to understand some of the mechanics of sports, like Football, from a perspective I’ve never even considered. The project slowly wound down over the next few years, resulting in another bout of burn-out from writing code, but it was a wonderful experience.

My last few years have been, thankfully, mostly quiet, and I’ve gotten the time to focus on personal long-term projects. I’ve also learned how to get the right amount of bend out of a perfectly smoked rack of ribs; a nice bark on a brisket; how to consistently cook a perfect medium rare steak; and determined that Mole does in fact need chocolate in it.