Did you miss me?

Hello there. 👋 It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these, hasn’t it? Let’s see, my last blog post was… in… uh… 2012. Let’s catch you up.

In 2016 I stopped posting on Facebook due to an intersting climate of hate, division, and way too many RT articles being shared - which it turns out were engineered to sew discord among us. Twitter than became my home for updates and such until someone bought it out and fired majority of it’s staff, turning it into a platform inspidred by turn-of-the-centry newspaper tycoons and the influance they wielded.

Previously on…

The last time I was producing content on the norm:

  • I was the co-host of a suprisingly popular online radio show that we really should have turned into a podcast. With the great Patrick Godwin and questionable Kroze Kresky we disected the week’s video game industry news way before gamergate was a thing. It fizzled out due to availablilty issues and our careers, however in retrospect we were ahead of the curve.
  • I had just moved to Chicago and taken a job as a Designer and Developer for a financial advisor marketing group (FMO). This job gave me the opportunity to prove my web design skills (since I didn’t have to focus on print), focus on my web development skills, and learn WordPress.
  • I was living in Rogers Park (That’s in Chicago!) with my then girlfriend (now wife), in a fantastic 1 bedroom apartment in a questionable neighborhood.
  • Donald Trump was a meme and had no chance at winning the election.

Since then

  • I got an amazing job as a developer for a top firm in Chicago, leveled up a few times to Staff Engineer. This has allowed me to develop a mastery of front-end, strengthen up my back-end, and work with some of largest properties in the world (McDonalds, Hilton, Tootsie Roll, Red Rocks, The State of Illinois, etc…)
  • We moved a few times, bought a condo in Albany Park, adopted 2 cats, got married, had a son, and bought a house in Portage Park
  • Stephanie got a job in California, so during the second wave of Covid we moved to a town literally called Corona.
  • Switched over to electric vehicles, because not only is everything in California super expensive, but the gas prices are insane.
  • We lost Curzon, but still have Ezri.

I think that brings you, dear reader, up to speed on where I’m at in life. Although I’m excited for…

What comes next

I’m working on a few promising projects at the moment which have the potential to take my career to the next level. First, I’m working on a mobile app built in Ionic React Native and Express.js that should help both consumers and delership personnel learn about and make educated decisions in the world of Electric Vehicles. Next, I hope to finally start my YouTube video series CSS Saturdays, to help aspiring engineers just starting out demistify CSS and see it as a tool in their kit. Finally, next year I’m hoping to break ground (for the third time?) on Triceratops, a web app that leverages my decade of expierence in running fan events into an app for planning conventions and facilitating ticket sales. Exciting stuff, and I’m making good progress.

Outside of tech, I’ve also started drafting out a novel (for reals, although I haven’t even told my Wife this yet), I think I have a solid first chapter written, and hoping to hammer out a chapter every few months when I run into a creative block on the other projects. It’s a lot, but by pacing myself and having realistic expectations (like the novel possibly never being finished) I think it’s managable.

I’m hoping to chronolog these ventures on this blog (along with my random ramblings and thoughts). Follow along if you’d like. Also, since i’m not up on Facebook or Twitter any more, you can follow me here if you’d like: