A quick glimpse into my world

The Basics

I was born in a small city named Amarillo in Texas. My parents met a little after they arrived to the states and I'm now the oldest of seven children.

Although I've recently passed the thirty year mark, I still feel young and hope to feel this way for a long time to come. I graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2002 and have been working ever since.

Personal Philosophies

I consider myself to be a relatively easy going person. No matter what problems and trials are thrown my way I always remind myself that there are bigger problems out there being dealt with every day. That's not to say I don't take what I do seriously though. I'm a firm believer in doing something right or not doing it at all. This way I'm not wasting my time as well as the time of other people around me.

I enjoy interacting with people of all different kinds of backgrounds. It fascinates me to think about what a person might have gone through or done so far with their time in life. I honestly believe there's something I can learn from anyone, no matter what they do or where they've been.

Current Work

I feel fortunate to have found something that I not only am passionate about, but get paid to do. Although I have my degree in Economics, the web is where I want to stay at for the foreseeable future.

I most recently worked at Tribal DDB in various Application Development roles for over four years. I'm currently most interested in working freelance jobs in hopes of obtaining a more balanced lifestyle. We'll see how that goes.

The recent growth in social networking has allowed me to combine my passion for web development with the social side of me. I am looking to expand my presence in the social networking space and contribute to it through various projects I'm working on. The nerd in me can't help but to feel like these are exciting times in regards to the evolution of the web.

About This Site

I redid everything from the ground up for this site. My tasks included everything from the design and development to database administration of the site. Below are some highlights of what's hidden underneath the exterior.

• PHP 5
• MySQL 5
• jQuery
• Wordpress integration
• Zend Framework
• Pure CSS layout
• Cross browser compatibility with major web browsers - IE7, Firefox, IE6, IE8, Safari, Google Chrome
• Mod-rewrite for friendlier URL's and ensuring future compatibility
• Twitter Search API integration
• Tracking ROI through Google Analytics
• Developed to be search engine friendly despite the use of AJAX throughout. Search engine spiders will have no difficulty crawling the site because it was built in a way so that any user can still navigate through the site even with Javascript disabled.
• Database was modeled so that projects can be filtered by certain criteria such as tags, workplace, and clients.
• Multiple revisions were made to ensure this site was as user friendly as possible.
• Code was structured in a way to maximize performance in regards to response times. Note: Further optimizations can still be done such as combining/compressing the stylesheets/javascript files but saving that for another time.