My Hometown
I grew up in Peachtree City, Georgia. I lived in the same house until
I moved away to college (to Atlanta, which wasn't very far, but I needed in state tuition).
Peachtree City is known for a few things. First, there is an abnormally large
population of Delta pilots who live there with their families. Second, we have some good soccer
programs in the area, and last but most importantly, we have golf cart paths running all through the city.
Yes, that's right, almost everyone in PTC owns a golf cart, and you can drive it to everywhere
from a fast food restaurant to high school. Unfortunately my mother recently sold ours, so
I'll have to borrow friends' carts when I'm in town now.
High School
In high school I had several interests, but the top few included girls, soccer, and computers.
I played soccer since I was 8, and was fairly good. My position was sweeper,
and we won state my senior year,
defeating Para View High School who beat us in the state finals the prevous year. Club ball, I played for the Lightning
Soccer Club for a few years (out of Fayetteville), with Concord for two years (out of Atlanta),
and finally a year with the Lazers (out of PTC) my senior year (got tired of traveling far for practice).
Because soccer was and is still not a viable career path for the majority of people
in the United States, I let my love of computers choose my college. My computer experience started when
my dad bought an old 386 with windows 3.11 while I was in about the 5th grade.
I would use Netscape to surf the web, and Microsoft Works to write my school reports.
Later, we got a pentium with windows 95, and although I didn't like
the new look and feel for a bit, I finally got into it because of AOL.
Later I got my own computer in 9th grade with Windows 98, and over the next few years
I discovered programming, open source, and Linux.
After discovering the world beyond just websurfing and casual computer use, I began taking an
electronics class in high school with a man named Mr. Iverson.
Mr Iverson was not very strict, and so we ended up spending a lot of the
time in the class building and fixing up the old donated computers, as well as
installing and testing different software with the networked computers.
I also got into web development during during this time. Some friends and I
competed trying to get the coolest stuff on our
simple html free geocities sites. This eventually lead to my understanding of html, css, javascript,
ftp, and other simple web technologies that I used as a foundation for my experiences in college.
College Life
I had pretty much decided that Georgia Tech was the right school for me by the time I was
a freshman in high school. My decision was for three reasons. One, I needed in state tuition
and the HOPE scholarship. Second, it was one of the best engineering schools in the Southeast.
Third, the prospect of living in the city was exciting. At tech, I got a random
roommate named Justis Brogan. I've gotta say I was worried about getting a weird kid, but
Justis turned out to be an awesome guy. We even pledged the same fraternity together.
During my time at Tech, I participated in quite a lot besides just the normal course load.
I joined Theta Chi fraternity, Alpha Kappa Psi business fraternity, joined the Homecoming committee with
my wife to be, participaed in the Tech Beautification Day project council, the Greek Week committee,
and played intramural sports.
I met my wife Jennifer at my fraternity house my sophmore year. We were introduced by some friends that
attended UGA but came down for one of our parties and told her to meet them there.
We dated all though college, and had some great times together!
Getting Married
Jenn and I were married on April 22, 2006.
My groomsmen are Fabian Lamy (best man), Rich Spadiccini, Justin Stay, Charlie Beacham, and Martin Lawson.
We were married at a little place called Little Gardens that fancy Sunday brunches and events in a large back
room that opened up to a garden area.
The proposal is an interesting story.
I entered a contest put on by WSBTV (channel 2 news), Solomon Bros Fine Jewelry, and Scott Kay. The
contest was for the most romantic proposal, and I won with a large scrapbook I made for Jenn, with
the words "will you be the mother of my children?" at the end. The prize was a wedding ring!
It was a really cool experience, and winning a ring for Jenn was exciting!
Graduated into the Working World.
After graduation, I had a few job offers but chose to work for ISS (Internet Security Systems) for a
few reasons. First, I was highly interested in network/computer security. Second, thir world headquarters was located
here in Atlanta, so being at the center of the action was very appealing. Third, I really liked the people that
interviewed me. Questions ranged from networks to programming to Napoleon Dynomite :)
ISS has since been aquired by IBM in 2008, so now I'm an IBMer! The change has been bitter sweet.
It seems like some of the great talent at ISS left for other jobs and the culture has changed
quite a bit. The benefits are good of course, and job security is still fine, but it's very much
a different company at this point... but I suppose that was to be expected.
Wedding and Honeymoon.
The Wedding was absolutely fantastic! The weather was perfect, although I was a little worried when
it rained that morning, everything was dry by the afternoon. It went by pretty quick as well,
and everyone said they had a really great time. My mom kept crying and just saying it was the
most beautiful wedding ever! Speaking of my mom, I want to thank her again for all her help and support,
and for making the beautiful flower pots for the rehearsal dinner! (For those not aware she's an art teacher,
so yes she actually made the pots themselves). After the wedding, Jenn and I took a break for a while, and
regrouped with everyone to go out to Wild Bills for the night, which turned out to be a really fun place.
Although I didn't ride the mechanical bull I was hoping for, we did drink and dance and had a good time.
The honeymoon was In Miami (South Beach). We stayed at the small but nice Blue Moon Hotel on Collins Ave,
between 10th and 9th street (I think). The room was small but cozy, but most importantly, it had killer AC
which is just a must down there. We did a lot of stuff including an everglades airboat tour, deep sea fishing
(we didn't catch a thing though), A Kenny Chesney concert, Clubbing, and more shopping than I care to mention.
The pictures tell most of the story, so I'll put those up at some point. Oh yes, and the last day there, we
decided to take it easy and hang out at Wet Willies where I drank somewhere between 4-6 drinks called
"call a cab". By the end of the day we had quite a few pictures we didn't remember, and my ears were pierced
again. I had been planning on doing the ears again since Jenn had mentioned she missed them, I'm just
glad I didn't get anything else stupid done while I was there. We also had a fiasco one night when we took a
shuttle to Fort Lauderdale to shop at the Sawgrass Mills outlet mall, the largest outlet mall in the USA.
We took too long eating at a place there called "Legal sea foods of Boston", and missed the shuttle back, so we
to cab it and paid triple digits to get back to the hotel. I also got my hair cut by a "rafter" (He called himself
that) who said he spent 5 days on a raft to get here from Cuba.
Buying a House
So Jenn and I have now bought and moved into our first house. Everyone kept telling me how much work it was going to be,
but you just don't understand until you actually have to do it all I guess. So far we've painted the kitchen, master
bedroom, 2 guest bedrooms, our office, and the guest bathroom. I've had to put together furniture, re-caulk seals, trim
bushes, mow grass, and scrub just about everything. We've also had to find furniture to fit in a few places, but
craigslist has been very helpful in that regard. So at this point, our house is almost in good shape for having friends
over! I just have to finish staining some furniture and hang a lot of pictures/mirrors and things should be looking good.
I've also completley remodeled our master bathroom... we knocked out a wall, tore out the carpet (who puts carpet in a
bathroom anyway??) show and vanities, and redid it all. I learned how to tile, build a shower pan, tile a shower wall,
solder copper piping, install a vanity, build shelves, install new facets, and install a new shower valve. The
experience was pretty awesome, but it did take about a year to complete from start to finish. As you might guess Jenn
was not happy about that but now that it's done she's very happy with the outcome! The only thing I didn't do myself was
to install the glass shower walls as I didn't have the proper tools for that and they were too expensive.
See pictures of the shower renovation in my pictures section!
