Computers

Growing up in the 80's, I still remember sitting next to my older brother and staring in awe while he dominated any computer game he played on our PC. Watching him navigate DOS with ease was nothing short of magic to me. I knew this was a word I wanted to become a part of one day.

Computer Hardware

Wanting my own PC, they were too expensive for me to afford at the time. My father, a software and electric engineer, had built his own PCs for years. Back in the 90's, this was the cost effective way to get a modern system. Every couple of months, my family would go to one of our local computer fairs. Walking into the huge auditorium, it was overwelming seeing nothing but an endless sea of PCs, PC components, and software products. I remember being more excited walking down these aisles than those of Toys 'R Us. Much like today, the technology was constantly evolving so every fair had something new to offer including the latest and greatest motherboards, processors, video cards, sound cards, video games, etc.

By the time I was in Middle School, I finally had enough saved up to start building my own PC! At one of the computer fairs, I was able to pick up a 'barebones' system which already came with most of the core components: a case, motherboard, CyrixMX x86 processor, RAM, a 3.5" disk drive, and a basic video card. Being able to use some older pieces in our basement to finsih the system, I finally had my own system that I could tinker with. If I bricked the OS, I was able to re-load Windows without worrying about anyone else losing data on the PC. Over the next couple of years, upgrading this PC brought me great joy and helped nurture my love of computers.

Software Programming

My father was always a role model to me. My love for Computers and Music both come from him. In fact, it was either 2nd or 3rd grade when we were asked the "What do you want to be when you grow up?" question in school and I only had one answer: a Software Programmer like my dad!

During High School's summer break, my dad was able to get me an internship at his work as a software tester. This was an amazing experience where I was able to interact with real software programmers and better understand my future career. The main software I was testing ran on the Solaris operating system which was a huge depareture from the DOS/Windows world that I was used to. I was also able to intoduce myself Batch, Perl, HTML, and Java programming languages in addition to exercising my ability to swap out PC hardware.

It wasn't until Junior Year of High School that I took my first programming class: C++. I remember it wasn't easy at first and I did struggle to fully embrase the concepts. If I recall, I didn't get a good grade that year. Our instructor, Fr. Tucker, still allowed me to take the next course Senior Year: Advanced C++. Something happened over the summer because suddenly, it all just clicked! I remember being able to complete the assignments with ease and even received an 'A' in the course. I was confident this was what I wanted to do!

College - University of Delaware

I came to the University of Delaware armed with a newly build PC which was unfortunately paired with the buggy Windows Me. It was quickly updated to Windows 2000 after randomly losing the ability to communicate with my optical drive. Although I had played some PC games with friends via dial-up modem in High School, the dorm network was the first time I experienced a LAN party. It was an amazing experience being able to play along with so many friends from various PCs at the same time!

The University of Delaware's teachers preferred Unix/Linux as their OS of choice. Although I didn't have a personal system of my own, we were able to connect to shared servers on their network. The main programming languages were also C and C++. However, I was able to take a couple of classes which helped further my experience in Java while also introducing me to assemnbly language, LISP, and JSP.

During Junior year, students had moved from using desktop PCs to laptops that could be taken to classes. This is when I upgraded to a Toshiba laptop. Having the freedom to take my work anywhere and have my PC on hand during classes elevate my studies to the next level. It was freeing being able to work on my projects anytime and anywhere I desired.

Career

Immediately after college I was hired to be an MIS assistant at Hologic. This was another internship which I was later informed would not be turning into a full time position. During this short stint, including PC builds, PC ghosting, printer maintenance, and resolving general Help Desk requests.

After a couple of months, I started working for Technical Writers, Inc. who contacted me out to Agilent Technologies. My new position carried the title 'buildmeister' which is their software build & release engineer position. I inherited the automated build scripts and installation projects for various software driver packages.