Early Life

Born and raised in Middle Tennessee, I grew up riding bikes to the local comic store and playing in the woods with friends. I was lucky enough to have a parent interested in computers, so we had a Commodore 64 right when they came out. I was _very_ interested in it and spent many hours typing in code from the back of magazines and doing all the research I could in that day to learn about programming BASIC and making little programs and games.

While we had game systems and I loved playing video games at the arcade with friends on the weekends, I was always more interested in how they worked and how I could make my own games. The 300b modem connection I had to a BBS was a great way to play new games and a long-form style of D&D with others. I certainly experienced the pains and joys of moving from 300 baud up through the years to my current fiber connection. 6th Grade me would be so jealous of current me.

Pretty much as soon as you could start making html web pages on sites like earthlink and geocites (1994?), I was trying to learn how to do it. It was like a BBS for the whole world.

Performing & Recording Musician

At the age of 14, I got my first guitar from an uncle and I had a new obsession for a while. I had been interested from an early age in watching others play music and knew I wanted to learn that skill one day. I quickly threw every extra moment into learning guitar and how to play some songs.

This led to being in many different bands of varying quality over the years. Some of the better bands recorded albums in professional studios and during my early 20s, I did a little touring of the US with Fluid Ounces and recorded several albums with that band.

After life changed for a bit (got married and had kids) and I got away from live performances, I came back to it in my 30s and reformed with Fluid Ounces for some local shows and another album that we recorded in our home studios. Some other bands came out of this before I decided to take a break again.

After another short break from performances, I joined back up with old friends in the band sElf and we played some reunion shows with me filling in for the original guitarist. This led to some bigger shows including a couple of sold-out performances in NYC and LA that culminated in a performance on the Jimmy Kimmel Show and Last Call with Carson Daly. Truly a magical moment for someone in their early 40s. A couple of years later, we opened for The Killers in Vancouver, Canada and Portland OR. Who knows what will happen next with that band...

Learning To Code

In 2000 when my first child was born, I decided it was time to start a new career and came back to my love of computers and creating things with them. I had previously created the website for the record label of my bands and managed what little there was of social networking back then, but I was ready for something more serious.

I started out with a Microsoft Certification (VB.NET) and that allowed me to get my first job writing ASP code with a MSSQL backend at HCA Healthcare. I worked on lots of legacy ASP code with COM+ components in IIS that connected to AS400 systems elsewhere.

Around this time ASP.NET was spinning up and c# was becoming more widely known and I was learning it from the start but not really able to use it much in my daily work yet.

Evolve Learning / Nextwave Knowledge
Somehow, this led to elearning and online training and creating a couple of companies with others and then solo writing a Learning Management System in ASP.NET/c#/MSSQL and then a Knowledge Management System in the same stack with my own company. After a few years of this, I decided to sell that off and start working as a developer for someone else so I could do what I love the most and create new things.

Rustici Software

Since then, I've learned so many languages and databases and app server stacks and experienced the inner workings of integrations with so many companies that I feel I'm well rounded as a developer. I've written iOS and Android native apps and worked with Xamarin mobile as well. I currently work mostly in Java, MySQL, and Typescript/Vue in an AWS stack and I'm learning c++ on the weekends for my Unreal Engine game dev hobby. Whew... Feels like a lot when I write it down.

Making Videos

As if those other things didn't keep me busy enough, I also create videos for a few YouTube channels. I like to create short film stuff and some basic tutorials about whatever I'm into at the moment. Currently, I'm making lots of videos about Unreal Engine.

Contact Me

If you need to contact me for any reason, the best way is through email or any one of the social media outlets listed below.