His Story…
I was born in Pennsylvania and raised amidst its forests. Despite my love for the wilderness, my earliest interaction with technology was in late 1985 when I was only 4 years old. My parents had brought home their brand new Tandy 1000 EX, complete with an external 5.25″ floppy drive, joystick, and a Tandy DMP-133 dot matrix printer. With that machine, I was tinkering around with BASIC by the time I was 6 years old, and playing awesome 8-bit video games of course (Mickey Mouse’s Space Adventure, anyone?).
Computer and console games are actually the fuel to the fire of what would eventually become my passion for web design and development. I was fascinated by the complexity and artistry that went into making games, and that fascination drove me to start drawing out my own ideas for a game. When I was first met with my beloved Nintendo in 1987 (remember the Mario Bros/Duck Hunt & Gold Zelda package deal from Toys-R-Us?), I truly fell in love with the wonderful world of video games. For several years I explored what the NES had to offer, captivated by its seemingly boundless wonders. When the Super Nintendo was released in 1991, I quickly made the transition and kept gaming (and drawing!) my little heart out.
Soon after the Super Nintendo, around early 1992, my parents got our first IBM-compatible PC. It was a blazin’ fast 25 MHz machine. By this time, my love for video games became a burning desire to learn how to create one. Already armed with some artistic skills, I taught myself C/C++ with the help of books and Bulletin-Board Systems in an effort to try and accomplish my game development goal. Unfortunately, it was difficult to find good material in that time period on developing games, not to mention I was only 10 years old, and although I tried as hard as I might, I was not able to grasp the full concept of a game. However, my defeat was not without some victory. Even though game development had escaped me, I had learned enough about C/C++ that I was able to develop console and GUI applications by the time I was 12.
It was then, in 1994, that I was introduced to the Internet. I was on Prodigy at first, then AOL, then a local dial-up service that allowed unrestricted access to the web. I remember reading an article somewhere now lost to the evolution of technology that spoke about how easy it was to create and share an interactive presentation with web pages, and I was immediately interested to try this out. I downloaded an HTML primer, studied it, and started tinkering.
I was hooked immediately. I read books, used Altavista to search for materials on the still-emerging Internet, sketched out thousands of concept interfaces, made hundreds of experimental websites, ripped apart other websites to see what made them tick, messed around with JavaScript before it was considered “safe” to enable, learned Perl before PHP became the de facto web scripting language, then became deeply involved with PHP around 1998, and even organized basic classes to teach fellow students and teachers what I had learned about the Internet and its possibilities. If there was anything that dealt with the web, I wanted to be involved. I continued learning, designing and developing websites for myself and for others I even started conjuring amateur business concepts based off of the growing possibilities of the Internet.
Many sketches, designs, and thousands of lines of code later, I traveled to Columbus in Ohio. I came to this “technology hub of the Midwest” more as a tactical move to pursue opportunities of finding a technology career, as well as provide a low-cost living environment. I naively thought that success would surely reveal itself to me in some way with the amount of technology and financial companies around, along with the ever-popular Ohio State and its prestigious engineering degree programs. Though, what I found was quite the opposite of what I had expected.
For someone who had chosen to push forward using only my own skills without first obtaining a degree, it didn’t take too long for me to realize that I would only truly be happy if I were working for myself. Without a degree, it was difficult to find work and prove myself. However, for 10 years I managed to work my way into several systems administration, web development and web design jobs. This allowed me to gain the practical experience that I needed with the various industries and large array of technologies to eventually form my own company, where I could express my art as a full-spectrum web specialist and help people interact with the vast reaches of the web. Shortly after leaving 2Checkout in 2009, I started ZeroMethod with Brian Schlesinger and Zeppelin Vuong.
With each step onward and with every passing day, this company–nay, this fellowship–becomes more and more the product of all my life’s efforts. My time and energy, my creative passion, my ever-evolving experience, and my money toward countless cups of delicious French-pressed coffee are all committed to this collaboration of creativity and exploration. Dedicate enough energy toward anything and a return is inevitable. That is the philosophy which has fueled my entire adventure and continues to propel me forward.
End of line.
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