About Me
I was born in Greensboro NC. When I was 12, my parents moved the entire family to Kazakhstan whereI became very active in the hacker community. Me and my friend Kostya Tayban started running BBS's from our homes and were for a time connected to the FidoNet.
My wife and I came to the states in 2000 and in 2001 moved to Charlotte NC. In Charlotte I did IT work for several Car Dealerships as well as some web and software development for a few small start-up ventures.
In 2006, moved the family to Columbia SC were I begain working for the Institute of Strategic Languages and Cultures as a web-developer.
I work in PHP, Ruby on Rails, Ajax/JavaScript, Python and Clojure. I develop back and forth between a mac with TextMate and Linux with eMacs. I deploy to Linux
Over the years, I have worked for several start ups, including Lead Programmer for Leveraged Media, a Tech Company disguised as a Marketing Company disguised as a Tech company and most recently for Political Exchange, a Political Social Media Outlet.
I am currently freelancing as a Consultant here in Columbia, SC. I focus on building software infrastructures for start-ups, using FOSS in Health Care and teaching and training on FOSS.
I also do some dabbling in social media integration.
In 1999 I was first introduced to Linux. A family friend gave me a install disk for Red Hat. In order to get it to work on the desktop that I had laying around (some PI or PII that I had helped my Grandfather build earlier) I had to write my own config file for X. Ahh! I was in love. Over the years I have tried pretty much every single Linux Distro in existence. I tried Debian, Sabayon has a pretty take on Gentoo, and SuSE has it's charms but I have come back at the end to Fedora.
I currently go back and forth between the Mac and Fedora. I got started on the mac in school when the iPhone first came out. I had one and wanted to start developing apps. Then I started doing all my web development stuff on it as well. There are really a lot of nice , well thought out development tools on the Mac Platform that are coded by Indie Developers whom I don't mind supporting. Some of my tools are opensource, but only available on the Mac. I have found my self enjoying the well thought out-ness of the Mac, while it still retains the raw power and freedom of an open unix system. Once someone produces an Android handset that can match the quality of the iPhone, I migiht go back to exclusive Linux. I briefly owned the Nokia n900 and that is still to this day my favorite phone. Period. If they had continued the line with another high quality phone, I would have bought it...I was prepared for the smaller market..I was already begining to code some apps in Qt for it!
