Down the rabbit hole we go.... :lolg:
From a young age I have always excelled at math. Was doing 5th grade math tables in 1st grade and won the 24 math competition in 4th. College Algebra in 6th. (Then got screwed by the system and had to take it again despite the fact I got A's..)
Somewhere in the mists of this I started taking things apart, fascinated by the ways they worked I took apart just about everything I touched. This continued until 4th or 5th grade where I was finally able to start repairing/building things I had taken apart. It wasn't long until I had my hands on a computer but, this time instead of being interested in the hardware I was amazed by the World Wide Web. The biggest point of interest for me came while playing Neopets with friends where you were able to create your own customized store fronts and guilds. It wasn't long until I had found the "View Source" button and began taking everything apart. Soon I was creating my own images and building my own designs from scratch. This continued on until middle school or so where I got into my next two addictions: Myspace and Runescape. I was rapidly creating new designs for myspace for myself, friends and for sharing online. I was also actively writing macro scripts for Runescape. (Yes, I am a big cheater) I didn't take my first real computer class until my 8th grade year which was an intro to photoshop class. Come freshman year in highschool I was taking computers I which was basically a typing class. At that time, thanks to my frequent computer gaming I was typing 120+ WPM and obviously didn't belong in the class. The teach approached me one day and asked if I would like to jump into their computer III class which was intermediate Office and web development. A few weeks into this class I was then approached by a different teacher asking if I would like to join the Web Team. (First Freshman ever offered the position). Of course I accepted and continued the rest of my freshman year on the web team.
At this point I was fluent in CSS and HTML as well as Java and a few other macro languages and looking for more to do. I decided to start developing my own client for Runescape with a few other highschoolers from around the US in C# based off of color recognition which hadn't yet been done. (Current gen bots attached to the actual game and read values off that which was highly detectable and often resulted in a ban. We wanted to create something that was more like a human and could adjust on the fly.) I actively developed this for 6 months or so and had a rather dedicated community built up before we were hit with a Cease and Desist letter from Jagex ltd. We complied and shut down the site. From that point on I just developed scripts every now and then for other clients.
School came around Sophomore year and I was once again on the Web Team but, also taking programming classes in C and Java. Seeing as I already had a basic understanding of both I decided to pick up a new language on the web side. PHP was my choice and it lead me down a bunch of interesting paths. Fast forward a year or so and I had completely redone the schools website using PHP versus the existing iframes, built and implemented an email system for the whole school and was a hardware tech at TSF. Senior year was a lot of the same thing, I got bored with Runescape and Myspace so was just mostly writing PHP. I had something like 6 aiding classes for web support and was actively working for some 10 businesses as a web developer. It was around that time that I worked my way up the latter at TSF and was promoted to Design Team Manager. Roughly around this time was when I got tangled up with John & John as a developer for the driver reference table. I developed most of the table as it is today in my down time at school. It was then that John and I had a fallout with TSF and decided to start up Sysnative as a Forum. The site continued to grow as I finished up Highschool and went off to start my CS courses at the local community college. Most of the classes I found pretty easy and as I already had taken Calculus I picked up as many extra computer classes as I could to fill in the gap. I took everything from Unix to Web Application Development as well as the core curriculum.
I then transferred to Portland State University where I currently am a junior in their CS program.
The interesting thing about me is I don't really want to be a programmer, in all honesty I want to go into an IT position and manage Infrastructure(databases, users and computers). I just believe that a CS degree + a business degree will carry far more weight than a IT degree as it opens more doors.
Yup, that's my boring back story... :lolg:
