About
The inspirational executive headshot. Admittedly, not very inspirational.
I was still in middle school when my mom brought home our first computer, a 386 running MS-DOS that she’d picked up through a connection with my grandfather. I was told not to use it without supervision, since she had to start it up and shut it down for me. That rule went out the window pretty quick. I was using it mostly for MS Works, and the handy spreadsheet capabilities that let me make checklists for basketball and hockey cards. As I got older I used that machine as something of a bargaining chip. Whenever I’d get in trouble for something (which was a rarity in our house; my sister was troublemaker), I’d saunter over to the desk and upgrade something.
During one of my mother’s angrier moments I configured a mouse driver to properly read the serial port, and then installed Windows 3.1. She wasn’t so mad after that.
In 1995, before I even had a car, I convinced my granfather that I absolutely needed to have my own computer, since the tech my mother was using was woefully outdated. What followed was a $2,000 investment in a blazing fast 486 with 16 Mb of RAM, and a 1 Gb hard drive. At the time it was cutting edge. Of course, I used it for the same thing everyone was using their computers for back then: Doom. I didn’t play it much, to be honest. Instead I got my hands on a number of WAD authoring applications and set about remaking the game in my image, which is to say I churned out a bunch of maps. Not having the internet meant I had no real means of distribution save for a few 3.5″ floppy disks.
Curious as to how things like this could even come to be, I managed to convince my dad that I absolutely had to have a copy of Borland’s Turbo C++ compiler. Version 4.5 came on thirteen floppy disks, and took about an hour to install start to finish.
And somehow I ended up in web development. Funny how things work.
Some fifteen years later I’m working as a developer for the Boston Globe; specifically Boston.com, a division of the New York Times Company. My background includes over three years as a support engineer at IBM, work in web development for both Cambridge College and Amergent, and my first “real” tech job, a college internship at Sun Microsystems back in ’98. The list of clients that I’ve worked with reads like the Fortune 500, and damn if that isn’t cool as hell.
Look up me, ye squirrels, and know the face of doom.
I’m still very much a gamer at heart, with an ever-growing collection of consoles at home. There’s an XBox 360 (to replace another, still functioning 360), a PS3, a PSP, a PS2, and plans to get my hands on a Wii and DS early in 2011. Two desktops and two laptops comprise the rest of my nerdy tech, and you really don’t want to know how much time I’ve spent lingering in the World of Warcraft.
When I’m not gaming or programming for fun I’m spending time with my lovely wife of three years, or playing with Beasley, a beagle puppy of eighteen months, as he terrorizes the neighborhood wildlife. Sometimes we dress him up in clothes, and then take his picture.
I’m Interesting! Contact Me!
- @Technomicon on Twitter — For the folks who I know personally, this is the “all my tweets are belong to me” account. Privacy enabled, folks.
- @ImAGreatBigNerd on Twitter — For everyone. Don’t be surprised by the low follower count. Anyone who’d follow @Technomicon wouldn’t need to follow this.
- Oh Hey, I’m On Facebook — And so is most everyone else in the world.
- LinkedIn, too? — Yes, LinkedIn, too.
- Sometimes I post videos on Youtube — They’re probably not interesting. Mostly clips of my dog as well as mediocre gameplay footage. Oh, and my user handle might offend you. Just sayin’.