Who Am I?
My Mission
Cheers!!
Welcome to my website, I am glad you are here. If you are just poking around and want to learn a little bit more about me, this is the spot to be.
After graduating Syracuse University in ’95, I landed my first job in New York City working for a consulting firm that specialized in Rapid Application Development (they had a tool). Sitting as a traveling software engineer (otherwise known as a consultant), I assisted the Sales people with those technical questions that were a little out of their league, built Proof-of-Concepts for prospects and then turned those POCs into fully fledged production systems.
After a while, New York got old and I wanted something different. When my mom passed away in ’98 and my girlfriend of 5 years decided to explore other opportunities, I decided that it was time for me to see what life was like in another part of the country. So, I moved to Southern California in 2000, still clinging to my old job and experiencing what life was like without a winter or a fall. Needless to say, I was hooked.
In 2002, the SoCal office for my company closed and I took a nice severance package and some time off to explore. This is when I met my wife to be, and with money still in the bank, I did some traveling and took a gander at establishing my own startup.
The startup idea was great, we developed a highly desirable API and system for mom-and-pop shops that used QuickBooks to transact with larger companies like Sysco Foods and Walmart. The VCs loved the product and were poised to invest 2 million for us to expand when disaster struck! Two of the co-founders, who were married to each other, didn’t want a percentage of ownership to only go to one of them. That was make or break for the VCs and so our startup was torpedoed, and I found myself looking for work.
Did I mention I met a girl in 2002? Well, we tied the knot in 2005 and working for start-ups wasn’t something she was into me doing.
So, I tried my hand in the restaurant industry working as software engineer, IT director, networking admin and any other tech responsibility that they decided to throw at me. I did it all, helping the company build out new 50,000 square foot locations and making certain that all the Point-Of-Sale systems were operational, properly networked and protected, and all the employees were trained on it.
Well, they worked me to the bone. I was pulling 18-hour days, traveling to the various restaurant locations up and down California, all with the hope that all my hard work would not go unnoticed. Well, it was noticed, just not in the compensating way that I had hoped for, so it was time to move on and see where this crazy tech career would lead.
My ability to do anything, swiftly and proficiently, turned out to be a good skill to have when you needed to learn new software well enough to support, train and demo it. Add to that my ability to configure routers, switches and firewalls, setup new servers and workstations and then pivot to developing a new XML/JavaScript parser for customers looking for feature enhancements and you had a jack of all trades, a small companies managers dream.
That small company was bought up by a larger one, and the larger company decided to clean house with the exception of the key players, of which I was one. So, here I was working for a new company, and with no datacenter to manage, my focus shifted exclusively to software support, design and implementation.
During this time, my wife and I welcomed a new little Bravo into to world. Life was good, every component was in place and things really couldn’t be better.
That little mini-me has turned into quite the softball player! There is nothing that I love more than watching her play, and while I have big aspirations for her, the path she chooses to follow is hers to make. I am just making sure I am with her every step of the way, no matter what she chooses!
As for my career, well, software, like people, gets old and the software I worked with for the better part of 18 years was put out the pasture and along with that, my job. I took the change of events as a pivot point for me to refocus my career into something that I really wanted to do. So, on that note I decided to go back to my roots, software design, development and administration, this time with a heavier focus on Cyber Security and AI.
To that end, I lend all my energies to learning everything there is to know in those respective fields and then passing that information along to all that are ready and willing to listen. And when I am not developing, designing or studying to be the best at what I do, I am at the softball field, watching my daughter hit another one out the park.