1977-1996 - Monticello, KY
I was born in south central Kentucky - Monticello/Wayne County - in the late summer of 1977. Wayne County was a decent place to grow up. The county seat of Wayne County is Monticello, which is still rather small, but has grown (in all manners except population) quite a bit since I was little. The majority of my family still lives in Wayne County so most of my traveling involves going back there to visit.
I attended the Wayne County School System up through 12th grade. I did the original web site for them around 1999. It ran FreeBSD on a 486, the only hardware they had available. The basic layout is the same, but I take no credit for its current state (though they still use my original logo.) Growing up I played baseball, basketball, and football, pretty much everything that could be played. In high school I was in band for two years, playing percussion, and then played football for two years making me a rarity, both a band geek and jock. I didn't really consider myself either of the two or anything else specific for that matter.
1996-2000 - Lexington, KY
After high school, I attended The University of Kentucky College of Engineering in Lexington , where I received a BS in Computer Science. I lived on campus my first year in Hagan Hall. I had a roommate who dropped out so the 2nd semester I had a room to myself. I sat down during orientation week and created this massive grid of requirements and classes that would fulfill them which turned out to be extremely useful. It for the most part let me plan out my 4 years and plot out everything I needed and wanted to take. It ended up letting me have a relaxing final semester in which I had only one tough class and the rest just fulfilled random requirements.
While at UK I worked for Student Computing Services (they're still using the site I created for them, though they've messed with and broken it in many ways.) first as a lab consultant and later as a lab manager. It was a great job, the source of most of my friends at UK. We all worked in the Chemistry and Physics lab and there would normally be 4 or 5 of us there hanging out with only 1 or 2 on the clock. We grilled out, went to baseball, basketball, football games, and watched WWF (WWE now) wrestling on Thursday nights. It was a great time and a great group of friends, probably as eclectic a group as I'll ever manage and I think that was a big part of it.
2000-2005 - Lexington, KY
After graduating from U.K., I continued to live in Lexington and worked for Lexmark Intl. Where I was in the Color Science and Imaging group. Part of my time was spent in support of the functions of that group, but my job duties varied. I spent quite a bit of time doing image analysis work measuring the print quality of printers in all stages of development and production as well as comparisons to competitive printers.
2005-2007 - Seattle, WA
After 5 years I decided it was time to move on and try something new and moved across the country to Seattle, WA where I worked for Amazon.com in the the Digital Media group. It's been interesting moving to a place I'd never been (before coming out for the interview) and didn't know anything, but I'm glad I did.
2007 - Palo Alto, CA
After 2 years at Amazon I decided to move down the coast to the Bay Area. I landed in Palo Alto, CA where I worked for SayNow.com.
2008 - Present - San Francisco, CA
I left SayNow late in 2007 that year with an idea and a dream. I moved up Highway 101 to San Francisco, CA where I live in the Mission. The idea(s) have come and gone, shifted and changed. It's been a fun and interesting year and I've learned a lot. I'm currently in the process of figuring out what's next, got any ideas?