A Little Background
Well, not really too little, but hopefully I won’t bore anyone…it’s all great stuff…really
I learned programming in high school, mainly Pascal on UNIX PCs (yes, we all thought that was way too much money to spend on computers that we were just using to type short Pascal programs on), with some Hypercard on Apple II’s, and some TC Logo on any PCs they had lying around. Before this I had really just tinkered with my old Commodore64 and BASIC, so nothing too crazy. Not seeing any of the potential work or monetary gains in this, I switched gears and went with Biology in college. In my junior year, I realized that I really did not like the biology I was learning (that plus my grades weren’t up to par with being that doctor my mum always wanted me to be), I figured it was too late to change course so I might as well finish up and figure out what I wanted to do after graduation.
I ended up going back home and looking for whatever would earn me some cash, that did not involve manual labor (grocery store stocking and assisting my dad with home repairs taught me early about the benefits of an education). I began working as a temp, then worked as a DBA (well, they called me a DBA, but I don’t think MSAccess really counts, but I still keep DBA on the resume 
) at a mortgage company. I transitioned to their web department (this involved my boss leaving and them saying “Here, you have to do the web site now as well”). Luckily they hired a company using ColdFusion to develop their external site, as I had been having fun with classic ASP before that.
I ended up getting bored just working on the intranet (they used frontpage to manage it), and asked if the web development company needed any help building the site. Not ones to turn down free coding help, they jumped at the chance. From here I got to see (and learn) some not so useful coding practices for ColdFusion (pound signs everywhere), but hey, it was a start and I did manage to fix them going forward. I began working with CF4.5 with MSAccess as the dB, and was well on my way to becoming the CF Guru I am today.
Are you leaving your resume and your name off these pages on purpose? I like reading your blog but it’s kind of a bummer when you don’t know the persons name.
Thank you for your comments and for reading the blog. It’s definitely difficult to respond to your post when you don’t leave a valid e-mail address or name though. Any comments that are posted come through to my e-mail address, so I do get notification that you have posted something. I will certainly consider adding a “contact me” section to allow people to send me e-mail through regular methods though.
I created this blog as a means for people to get assistance with problems they may have, and for helping me to remember instances where I was having difficulties, and did not (and really still do not) see a huge reason for posting my resume online. I’m hoping that the code I post is helpful to others and perhaps, if I did need to search for a job, would be helpful in allowing employers to determine my skill level rather than relying solely on a resume. My name (Gareth Arch) is added to each comment I post.
Once again, thanks for reading, and feel free to add your e-mail address next time…I won’t spam you I promise