Bio of a Starving Artist

Originally I started out as a registered nurse in New York. I worked as an RN for about four years, the whole time wondering if I had made the right decision starting the career in the first place. I loved the patients and my fellow coworkers were some of the best people you will ever meet. However, the bureaucracy and the pressure was astounding. Because of this I begin to look for a way to enter a different profession.

I have been interested in computers for many years, ever since my grandfather gave me a Commodore 64. He even taught me to program the thing using BASIC. Mostly, however, I was only interested in playing games. It wasn't until I was married, quite a few years later, that I started becoming interested in more then playing games.

While browsing the Cornerstone Bookstore, in Plattsburgh, I happened across a book entitled, "Learning Perl" by Randal L. Schwartz. Thumbing through, it piqued my interest. The last time I had looked at any programming it was either BASIC, Assembly or machine code. This was something different. Although I didn't have a computer at the time, I began reading the book, excited about what I was learning.

I eventually bought a computer, a 486 with eight megabytes of ram and a little over 800 megabytes of disk space all for the modest sum of two grand and some change. I spent the next few months reinstalling the OS about a dozen times. Of course, it wasn't long until better computers came along (about a week after I bought the 486). So eventually I bagged myself something a bit faster (I don't remember quite when this was).

In the meantime the grandfather who had given me the Commodore 64 died. As a result I was given all his old computers, including several Commodores, a 286 and 386. Although the equipment didn't interest me that much (I was all for moving onward and upward) I was interested in a copy of the Coherent OS that came with the equipment. As I perused the user manual I was excited to find out that it came with a lot of tools any budding developer would find useful. After a bit of research on the Internet, I was saddened to discovery that Coherent was no longer being produced. However, a helpful writer pointed me towards Linux as a much better alternative. Linux was still young then and a lot of work had to be done in order to get it working on my PC, especially since I was new to this sort of thing. All I remember from that time was that it took twelve disks (all of which I downloaded using dial-up with a 14.4kbs modem, and that I eventually burned out my monitor trying to get X Windows working). But Linux had everything I needed to fulfill my growing addiction.

From there I went on to teach myself Perl (which I had set aside while I learned how to use the computer), doing some web design and working with databases. I eventually landed myself an office technician job working on Access databases in between filing paperwork for the other office grunts. But at least I was actually making money using the skills I had acquired working with databases. In my mind VBA programming, making money, was better then nothing. I did this for a few months before moving to a software technical support position with another company. The good thing about this new job was I got plenty of free time in which I was allowed to practice and learn new programming skills. Although still not where I wanted to be, at least I was making money in the technical sector. I even got to use Perl a number of times! To me this was a great boost. Eventually I did get a job that involved a fair amount of programming, but for now at least I was off and running.

As time went on I kept looking for new experiences and the opportunity to learn new languages. I soon realized that my thrill wasn't with a particular language or job but with any language or job, as long as it was programming. I taught myself C, C++, PHP, VB, C# and Delphi as well as exploring a number of other languages like Python and Ruby. I simply loved to program, and the job that gave me the most work programming was the one I loved the best. On the flip side, I discovered that when programming jobs dried up I became completely disinterested in working. It was either program or nothing.

One of my most rewarding experiences was helping to design and implement, from the ground up, a piece of industrial farm equipment that sorted pigs. This device would let a pig in, weigh it, and send it out in one of three directions, depending on presets uploaded to the embedded computer by the farmer, using a PDA. The user could also download statistics onto the PDA and view various reports.

I worked on the sorter project for just under two years, designing all the software. The sorter head used what we affectionately called a brain, which was, in fact, a micro board touting an Intel 386EX. This used an RTOS (which I didn't design) and was coded in C. The PDA was programmed in C# and used 802.11 to communicate to a wireless router which in turn was wired to any number of sorters in the building.

Working with the company, the farmers and the installers taught me a lot about the entire development process, from concept to production. But the most enjoyable part of it all was programming the different components, sometimes ten hours a day, six days a week. I felt as though I had died and gone to programmer's heaven.

Today, almost nine years after starting my career change, I am still loving the art more now then ever before. Like most things people love to do, their passion for the thing grows in direct proportion to the knowledge gained of it. Programming, for me, is that passion.