In the spirit of traditional new beginnings...

Hello World!

I anticipate evolving this document as the information becomes outdated or N/A but for the time being here's some background dump...

TLDR:

I am a software dev in the Chicago area with experience in systems integrations, aka digital plumber, creating the "pipes" and processors that move/transform data inter- and intra- applications, DBs, teams, vendors, etc. My experience so far has lead me to work for the Education and Finance industries over the past 10+ years. My self taught dev experience includes: -in no particular order-

• Linux (Ubuntu - dev OS)
• Java (Primary language for my work projects)
• Camel (EiP)
• Spring (Latest framework utilized for builds/config management previously Maven)
• Kubernetes (Got rid of our pets for cattle)
• Various means of data schlepping; File I/O, APIs/REST/[A-]Sync, SQL DB transactions, CSVs & all such dubbed files that were anything but comma separated >.<
• HTML/CSS/JS (moderate frontend exp. for various projects)
• hm... probably more to come as I think of it or learn it. There are plenty of dev concepts I have and still dabble in but going forward, I will be building Git projects to speak to my experience.

Not so TLDR:

I've been in the tech space -loosely speaking- since...hm now that I think about it, I'm not sure which came first;

Jarring blast from the past alert

or if I was on one of these at school before having WebTV in our home...

I do know that WebTV was our first "computer" if you can call it that... maybe just access to the internet. Despite its flop, it was a monumental experience for me nonetheless.

Shortly after that, our first actual computer was an iconic -to the time- beige tower, sporting a flashy "never obsolete" sticker; an eMachines computer with a blazing 500MHz processor and I can only assume 32MB of RAM?

It was on that machine that I learned hardware upgrades when my dad and I wanted to play an RC aircraft simulator to learn how ot fly the real things. We found out we needed a GPU upgrade so I got to studying and learning WAY more than I needed about the computer internals; mobo, CPU, GPU, RAM, HDD, PSU, and I/O peripherals.

I followed that line of interest all the way through school, with PC games being of greatest interest of course -shocker, I know- but along the way I tinkered with HTML/CSS thanks to MySpace's flashy profiles, and performance tuning/overclocking to keep playing the latest games on the oldest hardware, network setups for LAN parties, and ultimately coding for setting up some automation scripts for... a thing

Entering the job market I first worked for a couple retail tech giants, then landed a student job as a computer support technician in college. After graduation I had to transition into a contract role as a tech liaison for a project, until that was complete and I was absorbed into a Java/Web dev team where I grew the most as a dev thanks to my supervisor, co-workers, and other team members.

Changing financial times and family obligations lead me to leave that position and join a larger company with my same job title but vastly different scope. Virtually no coding, a few challenges, and a year later I'm seeking a change of pace and looking to expand/improve my career in a bigger way than before, entering the job market with more to offer and seeking a better fit.

I believe that about brings us to current as of this publish date but updates and edits to come I'm sure as things evolve and/or I change my mind about the flow of the story ^.^

Thanks for coming on this intro journey with me!
While mostly just fluff, some may find this as a good grounding/relatable post to connect with. Check out my other posts -once I get to writing them- and I hope they serve better for useful content.

Cheers!