Just The Highlights
I was born and raised in southwest Michigan in a largely idyllic lakeside community. I attended college and lived in Florida for a few years before I made my way back to Michigan to enjoy the wonderful lakes and summer experience. I've lived here ever since.
I started my career in web design and development in 2006 and have been honing my craft little-by-little since then. However, I really got my start in tinkering on the web in 1998. What a time to be on the internet!
Outside of work I enjoy spending time with my wife and pets, reading, keeping up with politics, woodworking, home improvement projects, getting out on the lakes and rivers in the summer, and sipping a fine craft beer.
This Site
I’ve had something at this domain since 2005, running through various iterations of content management systems with my content focused on a personal portfolio or blog. Prior to the switch to Vue/Nuxt I had a self-hosted WordPress installation. Prior to setting up WordPress in 2008, I was using a MoveableType implementation.
For professional development reasons in 2019, I made the JAMStack switch to learn the approach and that’s where it stands today. This site is available publicly on my GitHub, and you’re welcome to fork it and use it as a basis to build your own.
Other Iterations
Unfortunately, I really only archived the most recent version of my Nuxt-based site. That was built with Nuxt 2. The rest of these are internet archive representations. And to be quite honest, they didn't capture everything back to 2005 and styles weren't saved with the pages until about 2010.
A Brief Timeline
1985
Born in a small town in Michigan.
1996
My dad brings home our first computer, an old 386 loaded with all kinds of software and games. I discovered QBasic was on this computer—also loaded with a bunch of games. I spent the entire summer playing games and learning just what the hell was going on with this thing. Around this time I started playing around with Geocities. Oh yeah.
1999
By this time I started a fan/guild/add-ons website for Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II that I called Yoda's Add-ons. My love for the web was cemented here.
2003
I graduated from High School and headed to Florida to study digital media.
2004
After four hurricanes and many sleepless nights, I graduated from college in an accelerated program with a degree in digital media in hand. That was a whirlwind.
2006
I land my first professional full-time role for a local company that focused on Corvette parts and accessories—right before the economic crisis of 2008. Goodie. While there I used just about every skill I learned in college, including video editing and motion graphics, graphic design, and my primary work of web development.
2013
I left that company after a wonderful six and a half years, and joined an advertising agency in town. The work there for me in the beginning was focused on sales education for selling appliances.
2016
I get a promotion to lead a team of hybrid designers/developers to work on that sales education material and several studio related web projects—mostly WordPress marketing sites.
2019
I switch gears to full time development and get absorbed into the larger agency's development team as the two branches of the agency fully integrate together. My work shifts to working on the client's marketing websites.
2020
Global pandemic hits and life gets much weirder and a little more scary. I also start on a team focused on creating Adobe Experience Manager components for the primary client's marketing sites.
2021
I leave the agency after eight and a half years to start my current job during that global pandemic. What a weird time, but what a great move. The work is focused on software development as a UI engineer.