Life was sweet, as a baby, more so when i was toddler. peeing and pooping on your own is so freaking liberating. I have said before “when i cant make it to the crapper, its time to pull the cord” . Childhood was easy, and now as a father i can see why. I was  a diamond to my parents, these children. Children having children was the theme of the eighties. You weren’t hip if your weren’t hopped up and prego. Well, that’s a over statement

Anyways, my father was/is a mechanic  and stock dirt track racer. My mother was a simpleton, shes anything but that now. Soon, into my young childhood, my parents, as most young couples with children do, broke up. The details are shady, and i never really could make heads or tails of both sides of the story – but none the less, they tried hard and in the end, ultimately did what was best for all of us and split up. That was the trend then, and as i have grown, can see how easily a situation like that can happen to almost everyone. Its obnoxious to think about – but i think thats cause i am a only child. Everytime you say that aloud, peaople always go ‘ohhhh, i see now’ . See what? oh right, i am a only child so there fore that automaticly makes me a little whinny brat who gets his way and everyones attention….. well, so what? f*&^ you man!

After turning 10 and moving with my mother 30 miles away to medford , i found metal. No, not the mineral, the sound. Yeah, no, not like baning on a piece of metal or nothing, but the style METAL. ya know, metallica, tool, nin, … some prick out there is saying ‘that isn’t metal’

whatever

Metallica was the first. I heard it when playing Dungeons and Dragons with my new friends… who went to highschool… and i was in seventh grade. Dosen’t say much, they DID play dungeons and dragons LOL . I love RPGs

I had picked up a keyboard before i was in gradeschool, and had played it a lot. I loved music, almost naturally. Having kids now, i can see everyone has this feeling. The only thing that keeps it alive, is the actule skill. which i think is true for any skill. Anyways, when i was 11 or 12  and hearing metallica for the first time, i was instantly converted. It was as though that little keyboard i would sometimes use as a moter boat with my step brother all of a sudden became path of destiny. Then i saw it as nothing but reality. Rockstardom

LOL

To much code and not enough coffee

I convinced my mother to buy me a electric guitar. She had told me they were getting one for me ( this was after months of begging. We were poor, so even 120$ was a lot back then ) one day before school. so all day, i was freakin out. I was so excited to jam out on my new electric guitar. Once school was out, they picked me up and she told me they were too expensive. I started to cry, once my mother noticed, she said “ust kidding! we got one”

It was a beautiful black white faced strat style samick guitar. If your wondering what Samick is, its a company that primarily and is known for building pianos. But yes, they built really cheap electric guitars. It came with a 10 watt amp and a strap ( the coolest part then ) and a wammy bar ( didn’t know how to use it at first ). No matter how hard i tried, i could never play like metallica. My guitar sounded like BBKing and nothing like the black, deep, metal i wanted to play.

I met this kid, when i was around 14. He had a flyer up looking for people to jam with. His favs were in my list of cool shit, so called him up.Turned out, he was 14 as well. When i came over, he had a freaking flying v ibanez, and three pedels ( pedels were news to me ). But his guitar sounded like metal. It was the freaking peddles. Of course! FX!

Music continued to grow around that time with a four track. It was a tascam brand multi track that used regular blank tapes. I realized where i could really be creative. Being that i didn’t know sheet music, recording was a great way to get the ideas down. This was also the first time i could set a goal. Like finishing a song, or an album. This feeling was the first of a creative flow that i have recently turned into a drive for perseverance.

The world had took a turn, after a regga/alternative band, a rockabilly band, and a metal band that never learned or wrote songs, i had found a new friend. The guy was a total nerd, but a very warm soul and fun to chill with. He was also a genius, and could program video games. He had a passion for it, and when i met him, he had just recently finished a perrty cute puzzle game on his macintosh power pc ( LMAO! ). I wanted to know – i loved rpgs and video games and always wanted to make my own. He slapped a 900 page text book at me and a few cds with a code warriors c/c++ compiler on it and said ‘call me when you finished that’

Okay, so i never even programmed a calculator, much less a video game. Luckly the book he gave me didn’t even touch video game programming. I had spent a lot of time messing around with geocities  ( for those of you unaware, geocities is a free web space site. You can manage your own url and create a website. ) and html, but that was it. So needless to say, c/c++ was hard as shit for a 14 year old. I spent two years on it, and in it that time i dont think i touched the guitar. It was like a dead zone, or a seriously retarded focul point i had never hit before. But it had the most destiny of all. I see this now

I spent hours pouring over this book, writing shit down ( notes i guess LOL ), and trying to figure out how object oriented programming worked. I had learned most everything but that then ( thats hilarious ). I finally gulled the nearve to start making something. I decided on a tic tac toe, mainly cause i knew it was quick, but also because there was an example of how to make one in the book.

The game was great, and silly. i dont think it even had a high score or anything like that.

Next, i did a dungeon game ( yeah, i hate D&D LOL ). It was a square based game ( tile based, whatever ) and even incorporated darkness and had two tools ( like zelda ) and backpack and story parts. My genius friend mentioned making a level editor one day when i was complaining about how hard it was just to make one area or level in the game. So this i did HA!
It was awesome, i had to break down most of what i had did and rewrite it, but i later had a level generator and a game. i think there was a ton of bugs and i got over welmed…. and then music came back into my life, and the power pc crashed. so there i was, out on the prowl and forgot all about the video game world. Oh yeah, and i learned i would have to learn calculas if i wanted to do 3d games. That really screwed that plan.

Some more years of fun came about. Middle school was fun, even more fun when i droped out every year. I had friends in highschool and we smoked pot and drank beer and had unprotected sex – it was the life! i begged my mom, in eighth grade, to let me drop out of public schooling completely and get my GED and attend community college when i was 16.

After some begging, she caved in and let me skip highschool. It was freaking awesome. I spent a lot of time by myself, recording music or reading, cause everyone was in school most of the time.

I later met my wonderful wife, becca

We were young, and in love, for almost three years, and then i knocked her up. I was twenty and about to be a daddy. And the world was apparently over ran by crooks and the mob. This was a great time to have a baby… and i was supposed to be a rockstar. But all of that disipitated when i saw my little boys eyes. Everything i wanted to be now had reverted, and everything i needed was at home, with my lover and my son. At the time, i had been a cook for a couple years and in a restaurant the day i started college ( i was 16 ). But now i was 20, with a baby boy, and i knew being a cook wasn’t going to help my son get through college, or have the latest video game system or laptop etc,….
While i was thinking this hard and through, i was feeding him a bottle and browsing the net ( ah those days were peacful , and probably looking for a way to make money, when it occured to me…. i could build websites.

I started out by making a site for my mom, and then the boss of the restaurant i worked, and then a few other people, business or otherwise. Through ups and downs, i learned a lot. I immediatly began on a design aspect ( knowing its the easiest ), but quickly versing myself in php ( which is just like c/c++ ) and mysql, as well as html , java, and css.
After a lot of hard work, i found myself with a dozen clients all wanting something done on there site… yeah, never a mention of money. I had already bargained my own price for the original site at 10 an hour to less then 3 an hour, and now they wanted this or that changed.
I tried asking for more money, and nope. and how could they, one was a restaurant owner that had mass content and probably a million dollar business, but yeah, 230 a year is too much LOL
I was done. But i just didn’t know what to do. I had learned a lot in php and other languages, but never really used my mysql skills. I later found scriptlance.com . I quickly met a lot of people and immediatly starting learning real applications and skills and techniques.

PS i dont spell check