It All Starts with a Spark...

It All Starts with a Spark...

I've been asked several times; "What's your story?".  I am going to try to write little tidbits here and there about myself in order to share my story, to share my passion.  I will try not to bore you with every little detail about my life.

As long as I can remember I loved going to school.  I love being around my friends and learning new things.  When I was in the 3rd grade my school received its first desktop computer, an Apple II and it was placed in the library.  If you wanted to use this machine you had to enter in commands, which no one knew how to do.  During school I would spend hours in the library playing around on it.  It fascinated me, it puzzled me, and it intrigued me.  The librarian challenged me to create a searchable database for the books in the library, like a card catalog.  By the time I moved away I had entered over half of the items into the database I created which was all saved on those big "Floppy Disks".  It took me a while but I figured out about the "What IF" statements.  After I figured that out my database was searchable.  I had created an digital card catalog.  You have to keep in mind I was a third grader put in front of this machine and told let see what you can do with it.  No one showed me how it worked, what it could do, or how to get data into it.  I just played around until I made things happened.  I did move away after I had finished the 5th grade so my learning didn't happen over night, nor did I give up.  This challenge sparked a passion in me to learn more about this machine.

My passion grew in middle school.  I learned about coding and was able to make basic graphics.  I was also able to make a little game, and it worked.  I started hanging out with guys that shared my passion.  I asked them a lot of questions.  I wanted to know what they knew so I could apply it and grow even more.  I went in search of new knowledge and wanted to learn from others.  During this time another passion was sparked.  It started with a cheap point and shoot camera.  I became hooked and wanted to learn photography too on top of computers.

Throughout high school I kept learning more and more about computers and computer programs.  I not only watched the evolution of computer technology, I lived it.  The birth of computer programs was happening and was shared with schools.  I look back now and I was lucky that my school embraced this tool and exposed us to it.  My teachers would ask me to figure out how these new programs worked.  They would hand me those very thick instruction manuals expecting me to read them, I would just hand them right back.  I couldn't read how they worked, I had to explore and experience it.  It didn't take me long and I could figure out every program that they set in front of me.  Not only could I figure out the program I was able to teach others how it worked.

To be continued .....