Hello, World!

I'm a software developer in Portland, Oregon. I've been writing code professionally since 1998. I primarily work on database-backed applications, and have been working in Ruby and Rails since early 2006.

Attention, Recruiters!

While I try to answer all inquiries, it'll save us both some time if you read the FAQ before emailing me. In particular, please do not contact me about jobs that require relocation.

I'm currently employed full-time, and not actively looking for a change. Still, feel free to contact me—there's a chance I'll know someone who meets your needs.

My Backstory

I started programming more or less by accident. Upon finding myself with some unexpected free time, I decided to teach myself how to do interesting things in MS Access. (Hey, it was 1998.) It took me about two weeks to decide I really needed to learn VBA. (Visual Basic for Applications. I did mention that it was 1998? I'm feeling much better now.) A few years of VB/VBA work later, it was starting to look like a career—so I decided to go back and actually get a computer science degree. I graduated cum laude from Portland State with honors from the CS department in 2007.

Since completing my CS degree, I've mostly been writing web applications using Ruby on Rails, specializing in server-side work.

What's Here?

Me, Elsewhere

You'll find the most relevant information on GitHub and LinkedIn.

In particular, these GitHub repositories will give you a reasonable idea of what my Ruby code tends to be like, and what kind of things I find interesting enough to work on in my free time: Cordon, Memonymous, Medievalistic, Ladd's Graph, Scotland Yard, and HighlandAR. (And yes, that last one is a joke.)

I do have a very search-friendly name, so Google will also point you to various other places, like Twitter (mostly personal) and Working With Rails (which I haven't touched in years) and even the old Joel on Software forum, which I somehow used to have time to keep up on.