When you're describing yourself, it can be difficult to determine what's hubris and what's honesty.

As individuals, we are our own worst critics, but we are also our own PR machine: we're revisionist historians with an eye on what will be seen as our legacy, and how that will fold into what we -- oft-times laughingly -- refer to as our legend. When we succeed, we want the world to know, and when we fail, we want the world to know that it's not our fault.

I bring this up because this page is -- obviously -- about me, but all I can do is give you my admittedly biased view of myself. After all, while I may write in the third person, I most certainly don't live in it.

I'm a unique and delicate snowflake, just like everyone else.

Over the last thirty years I've worked as a photographer, a technical writer, a trainer, a cook, an instructional designer, a teaching assistant, a dishwasher, an engineer, a blogger, a lab tech, a waiter, and a salesman, and each role helped to shape me into who I am today.

Focusing on technology, however, I first started mucking about with computers when I was in high school. I had the opportunity to play with the Apple IIc and the IBM PC Junior, and I fiddled with the Osborne and the Kaypro suitcase-sized luggable computers. Then again, considerintg Micro Cornucopia was published in my home town, my fascination with the latter systems was hardly surprising.

I've dabbled in mainframes and fed my share of paper tape and punch cards, watched as floppies moved from 8" single-sided monstrosities to obsolete 3.5" double-sided annoyances, puttered with Iomega storage devices, cursed at the vagaries of tape drives, and cast dire imprecations over my various external storage media. Still, I wouldn't trade a minute of my experiences.

I cut my teeth on CP/M, supported OS/2 and Lan Server, played with OS/8, learned graphics editing on Mac OS, tinkered with DR and Novell DOS, and dug into the innards of Unixware and Solaris. Even with my relatively agnostic approach to the OS wars, however, I consider myself to be -- first and foremost -- a Windows aficionado.

In college, I majored in History, but I spent most of my Work Study time in the shared Mac/Windows computer lab, and I spent my senior year of college balancing classes, TA responsibilities, and computer sales.

When Measure 5 put paid to continuing on to my Masters in History, I took a position with Intel Corporation in the Portland Metro area. Between my time as a green-badged technical contractor and my blue-badged engineering roles, I spent the best part of a decade playing in a world-spanning sandbox, and my love for technology grew.

Since I left Intel, I've either been contracted to or worked directly for General Motors, Convergys, Autodesk, T-Mobile, Yahoo!, and Adobe, and each one has helped me expand my horizons to a degree I didn't think possible. If you're interested in the sordid details of my employment history, feel free to check out my LinkedIn profile.

TL/DR?

Then let me just say that I am me, and -- overall -- I'm pretty happy with that.