Hello world! My website has been stale for quite some time, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy! Life got away from me the last few years. I went to work for Red Ventures as a front end developer and I’ve been very happy with the company I have found them to be and I’m happy to continue my professional journey with them. Its been a wonderful and challenging experience that continues to evolve and change alongside the industry. I was recently afforded the opportunity to move from Charlotte, NC to Detroit, MI. I once again find myself in a new city working for Red Ventures Bankrate business.
From a professional standpoint the move to Michigan was a really BIG change for me. I find myself moving from Frontend Development into Full Stack software engineering. Its presented me with a massive learning curve. Bankrate is currently in the process of becoming mostly a Vue.js/Node shop, but we have plenty of other legacy items still attached to our stack that will be aroud for a while. I’ve already been diving deeper and deeper into Vue.js over the last month or so, and I plan to continue my educational jounrney there.
Thats part of the reason I rebuilt my website. I’ve learned over my career, that sharing your experiences with others is key to furthering both your personal development and the development of others. As I look to becoming a Tech leader within my career, I think about this more and more; How do I best convey my experience to those who are following in the path behind me? I’ve had the good fortune to work with and help a number of Junior developers start their careers. I like to think I was successful in helping them become the amazing professionals I see them as today.
Some of my other goals here are personal. I strive to be more open and transparent in all things I do with my life (to the extent that is safe to do so anyway). In doing that I find myself consistently searching for an outlet to share these experiences. I’ve decided a blog may just be the thing for which I’ve been looking. However, this will not be a typical blog.
I’ve always found myself creatively inspired by magazine layouts. The art direction and the thought that seems to go into every layout is something I admire. I’m going to make an attempt at recreating this experience for the web. This doesn’t mean my blog posts will look like magazine articles. In some cases that may be true, but certainly not all of them. Since my new professional role finds me working throughout the tech tech stack more, these posts are partly an effort to stay current with the practices of Frontend Development technique. As with all things, this is an experiment that may see several iterations and changes over the next year as I work to fall into a pattern and cadence of wrting and development.
So what have I been up to for the last three years other than working? Mostly work, but… I also seem to have reignited my passion for Dungeons and Dragons. Having gotten into the hobby after highschool in 2002, I found myself playing less and less over the years, and I honestly thought it was something that would just kind of fade away from my life.
Shortly after I moved to Charlotte I realized that playing Dungeons and Dragons over the internet was a completely tolerable exercise, and additionally it was a great way to stay connected with my core friend group back in Michigan. So I began DMing a monthly game of D&D using the Roll20 app. It was a good experience, though Roll20 wasn’t without its quirks, but we found work-arounds for the most troublesome issues.
About one year later, I was feeling the itch to play more D&D so I started DMing two more games per week. If you’ve never done it before. DMing 3 games per week is a large undertaking, though I didn’t fully understand that at the time. But I had a lot of fun, and I quickly realized I wanted to share our games with the rest of the world. This lead me down the path of Live Streaming D&D
I didn’t approach live streaming with quite the niavetae that I had approached running three games per week. On top of my D&D experience I have had an extensive background in film and video production as a hobbiest. My friends and I began streaming Attack of Opportunity D&D on March 4th, 2018. One year later the YouTube channel Attack of Opportunity has about 120 subscribers, and three shows we’re trying to stream live weekly. We intend on continuing to develop new content for the channel. But we’re currently trying to fit life in around the project, which is causing us to frequently miss broadcasts.
Overall, I’m just a guy trying to find his place and his happiness in the world. I’m blessed and lucky that I have a good job, doing something I truely enjoy, and has allowed me to live in different places throughout the country. I’m excited for whatever the future may hold.
All in all I have plenty to write about, and share. Stay tuned…