I was born in a suburb of Dayton, Ohio, named Huber Heights.  We lived there until I was seven or eight years old and then moved north to the town of Amherst.  My parents are Gerry and Diane and I have a two-years-younger sister named Megan.  I lived in Amherst until going off to college in Syracuse, New York.  Growing up I went to Saint Joseph’s Elementary School and Lorain Catholic High School.  I was involved in Boy Scouts (Troop 427), Sandstone Summer Theatre, my high school’s drama club and worked at a True Value hardware store.  I spent as much of my time out of doors as I could and developed a ferocious reading habit, which remains with me to this day.  I’ve always had a hyperactive imagination and can quite easily lose myself in worlds of fantasy for hours on end.

In college I studied Design/Technical Theatre (class of ’99), with a focus in Lighting Design.  During that time I had my first introduction to computers and ended up getting hooked on them.  During these four years I worked for a company named Event Productions doing lighting, sound and staging on and off campus.  Midway through my senior year I met a girl named Lauren Halley, who eventually became my wife.

After graduating I moved back to Amherst with the intention of finding work in the Columbus area.  Lauren had been accepted to graduate school at Ohio University and I wanted to live near her.  As things worked out she wasn’t happy with being back in school and decided that she wasn’t going to stay there.  Not long after that I was offered a web/graphic design job in Cleveland, and ultimately we decided to live together.

We lived and worked in Cleveland for a little over four years, during that time living in a couple of different places, adopting four cats, and getting married.  Less than two weeks after the Christmas of ’03 my job was outsourced to India and I was fired.  This wasn’t as big of a deal as it could have been since I was planning to quit that job in a few months so we could put into effect our plan to move out the Seattle, although it did rob me of the opportunity to tell that company what I really thought of them.

At the end of March ’04 we packed everything we owned into a moving van, a trailer and our pickup truck and pulled out of Ohio, waving goodbye to my family.  Four days later we crossed Lake Washington into Seattle.  We quickly found jobs—Lauren at a Borders bookstore and me doing contract web design/development.  My career as a freelance designer lasted roughly four months, with over a year of unemployment and odd jobs to follow.  Lauren’s employment at Borders lasted through three different stores and came to a close in March ’09.  During that time we lived in two different Seattle neighborhoods, bought a house in Everett, and adopted a puppy.

In October ’05 I began work at the Apple Store University Village near the University of Washington.  I spent a couple of months as a part time Mac Specialist before being promoted to full time.  After about six months of that I was promoted to the role of Business Consultant, a job title I held for almost one year.  From that job I moved into the position of Creative,  which is Apple’s personal trainer role.  Eventually I was promoted to the Lead Creative position, a job which I hold to this day.

That brings us up to the present time.  To take it from here I would encourage you to take a look at the social networking web sites I’ve linked to below.  LiveJournal is where I keep my preferred blog.  Twitter is what I use for short, random observations throughout my days.  Facebook is the annoyance that I have to have in order to keep up with my far more socially savvy friends and coworkers.  Check ‘em out.

If you’ve managed to make it all the way down here all I can say is thanks for sticking with it.  Good job!