I've always strived to be the best at what I do.
After leaving a four-tour military career in 1998 to go to school,
I was recruited by a small start-up company as an Associate Programmer. Over five years, I built Web-
based solutions in Microsoft technologies in solo and team-based environments. I was hired by the parent
corporation as a Systems Administrator when the company closed, and became
responsible for as many as 100 servers and network appliances, nightly data backups, remote user support
and even facilities management until the facility was closed at the end of 2005.
After programming in experimental technologies for the .NET 2.0 platform and taking some time
off to finish my degree, I accepted a programming position with
Michigan State University. My responsibilities included managing a portfolio of legacy Web systems and
learning Java in preparation for upgrading those systems. I also acquired
project management training for career-oriented reasons.
By mid-2010, I was involved in a multi-university effort to create the new version of an enterprise
financial software package for the
Kuali Foundation. The technologies involved included Java, Eclipse, Tomcat, JUnit, XML, OJB,
Spring and Struts, Kuali Rice, and Kuali Workflow.
I left Michigan at the close of 2010 and built and launched Words for Lily, a smartphone- and Web-based learning system
for young learners. The technologies involved include Java, JQuery, CSS, AJAX, LINQ, and other advanced
concepts in .NET 3.5.
After launching
Words I was recruited for a Programmer Analyst position as part of a small team handling multiple
.NET systems for a firm in the financial industry. Additional technologies and software involved include
Visual Studio 2008, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and 2008, MSMQ and multiple open-source tools such as
NHibernate,
DropkicK,
UppercuT,
Mass Transit,
Castle Windsor,
Visual SVN and
others.
Throughout this history, starting in late 2006, I've been maintaining halfgk.com
using principally Microsoft .NET 2.0 (upgraded to the 3.5 platform), XML, and CSS. Additional technologies
include JavaScript, JQuery, Flash (just to try it), Typekit, and Visual SVN/SVN Tortoise.