About

I was born in Lubbock located just south of the panhandle of Texas. My family (mom, dad, sister, and me), moved to Colorado Springs, CO in 1992. My entire memorable life has been located in the same house here in The Springs.

My father was a computer programmer from the age of 16. Due to this fact, I was always around computers. Our house was always the home of the greatest new gadgets and electronics. Because of this, I gained an early interest in computing. When I was in 8th grade, I was presented with an opportunity to begin working with video. Given the task of creating a 'Yearbook on DVD', I quickly took up the art and became fascinated with both the cinematography and post-production aspects of film-making.

I had always played around with creating websites. At this time I knew the basics of HTML. With this limited knowledge, I was brought on to a team of two (including myself) to edit, maintain, and redesign my high school's website. At this time, the Air Academy Website was flash-based. Because of this, I quickly picked up a copy of Macromedia Studio and began learning. Although I was impressed with Flash's ability to render graphics effectively, it did not fit into the plan that I was formulating.

My goal was to create a school website where teachers could easily edit and maintain their own pages -- posting homework assignments, downloadable worksheets, and maybe even create forums for each class. It turns out that I achieved all but the latter. After truly taking the time to learn HTML and CSS, I re-designed the website. Because the site was now non-flash based, we purchased Macromedia's Contribute. This program was a simplified WYSIWYG which allowed teachers to create pages, and edit content simply and effectively.

By my junior year, I was the lead web developer. This position gave me the power to think outside of the box and try to come up with something completely new and innovative in terms of a high school website. Having learned a bit of PHP at this point in time, I knew the power that it had. I made it my goal to create a custom system for teachers, students, staff and parents. I started by creating a simple calendaring system which allowed teachers to post due dates and mark when exams would be proctored.

Once I reached this point, and the school saw the possibilities, they gave me a task - create a registration system to allow for the checkout (and check-in) of books for the English Department. Since I already had the calendar system created, a bit of re-work and re-use of code added a book check-in, check-out system.

Needless to say, these types of requests kept coming. I created countless small 'programs' for the school, many of which are still in use today. I did not, however, have much more time to work on my full-fledged portal system.

Nearing my senior year, the district decided that it was their turn to re-gain control over schools' websites. They mandated a proprietary CMS (Content Management System). Working within the strict bounds of this new CMS, I created the website which is being used today. According to the current webmaster, the Air Academy High School website is the most well designed and maintained site within the district. I take great pride in this fact and still consider that site my own.

After graduating high school, I quickly started working at a local marketing company. I was hired based on my previous video and web experience. Soon after being hired, the two other employees of this company moved on to bigger and better things. This left me and the owner. We stayed this way for quite some time, but it soon became too much for us to handle. We brought on two more employees. The four of us are Monarch Digital. It is here that I have created almost all of my websites.

I am currently attending the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs dual majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics. I plan on eventually transferring to Boulder to finish my degrees and move on to bigger and better things.