One summer, my friend Louis introduced me to a little shop down the street called a cyber cafe. I never imagined in a million years there would be a place full of people that was dedicated to playing computer games - I was in heaven. I realized I could play some of the popular games on the family computer, so I started playing everything I could get my hands on from Starcraft and Diablo 2 to Roller Coaster Tycoon. I would play as much as I could during the day, and then sneak down at night to play some more when everybody was sleeping.

Eventually I installed Counter-strike - in that game you could create your own spray paint image, and there was nothing cooler than that! I pirated a copy of Adobe Fireworks from Limewire and began learning how to create a spray. Down the road, my learning would evolve into all sorts of neat stuff, like how to create websites.

When I was in 8th grade my parents bought me my very own computer for my birthday - it was the best gift I've ever received. Pretty soon, all of my friends were getting into computers, too. We started having LAN parties every free weekend we could. Even if the switch broke or the ethernet cords didn't work, at least we were all hanging out and having fun. Those will always be some of my most-cherished memories.

Life started happening towards the end of high school, but I continued with my love of computers in between work. I eventually got a job at that cyber cafe down the street, and would work there on-and-off until it closed down around 7 or 8 years later.

During one of the off times, I went to cosmetology school and got my cosmetology license. I figured I needed to do something that was going to be steady and enjoyable. Unfortunately, I sucked at cosmetology, so shortly after getting my license I went back to the cafe. It wasn't all bad, though, because I made one amazing friend along the way (hi, Alison!)

All the while, ever since that first copy of Adobe Fireworks, I had been creating terrible websites for fun. When I turned up broke and stressed out in my mid twenties, my awesome roomate pushed me to get a recruiter and try for a web developer job so I could pay rent. I got my first career job working for a jewelry company's marketing team, and after that I went on to work for a sweet agency downtown. I have Dan to thank for starting my career as a developer. Unlike cosmetology, I did not suck at web dev, and even got promoted a few times, which was pretty cool.

After five years at my second job, I counted myself successful and had made a good living, but became mired in the day-to-day and began losing my flame. I decided to take a break and see if it was the job, me, or something else that had made me become disillusioned with work. Almost two years later, it turned out to be a little of everything, but I'm getting back in the saddle (this site is a part of that). If you made it all the way to here, then you're all caught up.