In third grade, "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" came out on a 5 1/4" disk for the Apple IIe. I stayed after school that day in the computer lab to play this new educational game with other computer kids. My dad got me an Apple IIe for home and later, after Marcia got a promotion at Microsoft and got a new Mac, I would get her hand-me-down Mac. She also bought me Microsoft Word and Excel which I played for fun. Those were my new games. Whenever I was stressed, I would turn on my Mac and teach myself a new feature of Word or Excel. Games took too much time (I would get addicted, realize I was spending too much time, and get rid of the game. I have only installed 5 games in my life, and played a total of 8 or 9. I do not believe in Playstation or ATARI or any of those because you can get the games for Mac or IBM and use the computer for more practical applications as well. Anyway, I got so good with Macintosh, that during high school, when the 3rd highest ranking tech support person at the school came across a bad situation that she couldn't handle (just before the female student had saved for the first time before printing) and I was able to save the day, I promoted myself, in my mind, to third highest tech support in the building.
Graduated high school in 1993, went away to college, got distracted from school work and ended up leaving before the end of my first year (came home and took 2 classes here), and then Marcia recommended AmeriCorps. I loved it there. But more about that shortly. During high school, my scoutmaster recommended, due my interest in science, that I volunteer at the St. Louis Science Center. I did that and loved it. In fact, for several reasons, during the summers that I worked with their summer camp, I worked daily 7:30AM to 6PM and loved it!!! Also during high school, I got interested in the environment, took a couple of environment classes, with someone else formed the recycling club, and found a store in St. Louis that at that time sold ecologically safe products for the home and office but now just sells recycled paper and other environmentally friendly products as well as other office supplies and offers recycling services. That company, Pedro's Planet and I are still friends. From what I recall, because of my relationship to them, I was awarded the Generation-to-Generation award from the Sisters of Loretto. My family also assisted in the beginnings of our municipality's recycling program of which we continue to be active members.
In AmeriCorps, which if you have not heard of it you can think of as a domestic Peace Corps, I was sent to Denver, Colorado, which I fell in love with (I have been back 10 times since and am planning to go to again for the eleventh time soon ). I participated in rebuilding a house from the 2x4s out, sorted the mail, worked on gardens, helped open Denver Public Library, work on building a 2000 ft. long trail in the foothills, etc. Also, early on, I volunteered to work as an assistant network administrator on the Novell LAN with Windows 3.11. My dad had been the one in our house to use the IBM clone (I always had the Apple/Mac), but this time IBM/Windows was the only computer around so I had to and did learn it.
I had gone to AmeriCorps*NCCC (the residential/campus piece of AmeriCorps) because I didn't know why one would go to college and didn't know what I wanted to do in the future. I learned why, and what I wanted to do, while there.
Sometime after I got out of AmeriCorps, August, 1995, I "followed Marcia" and took several jobs at temporary agencies doing secretarial and computer work. Later, on her advise, I took classes towards the MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer), and have since passed many of the exams, although I have not attained the full certification yet.
Anyway, after rising through some of the ranks, being able to focus on computers solely and not being a secretary any more, etc., I got a job at AT&T doing MS Access programming and being an unofficial assistant LAN administrator. During that time of growth, I was reintroduced to Steven Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People twice, the second time sticking with it more. I can once again explain more over the phone/in email.
Because it seemed like MS Access was a little too specialized, I began teaching myself PERL and PHP, both web-programming languages. I only have one month of PERL on-the-job experience, but I have 5 months of PHP full-time on-the-job experience. Most of that PHP experience came while working for ExpressiveTek, a small graphic design, web design, and programming company located in St. Louis, MO.
Since last September, I have discovered blue collar work, doing catering for Catering St. Louis.
Six months ago, my sister introduced me to Karen Kingston's book Clutter Clearing with Feng Shui. That, along with more of Steven Covey's books, has produced this website.