Most of the “Jack of All Trades” part of my personality comes from dad. He worked on cars, taught at a technical college, worked as a programmer, drove a taxi…the list goes on and on. Whenever the opportunity arose to help someone, friend or foe, he was there with his tools and a can-do attitude. There was nothing he wouldn’t try with all the confidence of a trained professional, but little of the skill.

Mom, however, was self-centered, anti-social, and convinced she was a modern Leonardo da Vinci. Her paintings, carvings, and statues were everywhere in our house. The problem with her was, if you didn’t drown her in praise, she assumed you hated her work, and her very existence. I don’t think she was completely sane.

Merged together, you get me, but with the third eye of seeing them as the world saw them. I’ll try to do anything, in secret. I don’t want people to see me fail, and unlike my mom, I assume everyone will see my stumbles while ignoring my successes.

I’m a good writer, programmer and database developer, but history has taught me to never assume I’m great at anything. I could be, but I don’t see it. This won’t stop me from trying my best, learning from each misstep, and getting better over time. I kind of have an obsessive personality.

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It took no effort at all to discover my dad’s big lie. Mom was confused, angry, violent… she had dementia. He kept this secret from his children for reasons I can’t comprehend. My wife, sister-in-law, and niece took care of her while dad recovered in a hospital. How they tolerated her nasty words and violent outbursts is nothing short of amazing.

My wife is an RN, and quickly realized my parents needed more help than we could provide, even after I left my job, so we moved them into an assisted living facility. Those places are expensive, like three times the cost of a mortgage on a good-sized single family home! We didn’t have a choice, and I assume others who experienced family dementia understand why they couldn’t keep living in their home without 24 hour monitoring.

When we cleaned out their house, I cataloged all the repairs it required, and there were a lot. I spent the next year and a half doing the best I could to get their house into shape for sale. During this time, last year in fact, my mother passed away from complications due to diabetes and dementia, leaving my dad alone in a facility that was only necessary because of mom.

Earlier this year I put dad’s home up for sale. To say I misjudged the housing market is an understatement. It didn’t sell, and now he’s out of money. I’m out of money as well. Next month, if it hasn’t sold, I’ll be moving him back into his house, but the repairs, and managing mom, has nearly bankrupted me. Luckily, my wife is still working.

I’d love to be a programmer or database person again, but I’m at an age where I’m no longer wanted in those fields. It won’t take much to right this ship. I just need to make a little per month to slowly reverse the financial damage this caused. I’m thinking… McDonald’s. We have a good history.

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Most of my efforts lately are centered around writing SEO friendly content for WordPress powered websites. I also create complex, database driven WordPress plugins that can do pretty much anything you want. My plugin PHP skills are insanely good and thorough, particularly so at my low hourly rate.

What’s my hourly rate? Well, it all depends on you. If you’re unrealistic and hyper-demanding, I’m going to be quite expensive. If you’re cool, I’m cheaper than most, if not all, of the highly skilled local developers you can find. No, I won’t compete dollar-for-dollar with Easter European, African, Chinese, or Indian developers. If you want to go cheap, that’s on you. Good luck. Fiverr is the place to look for that.

Unlike my foreign counterparts, I’ll meet with you, in person, at your office or a business of your choice (I really like coffee). I’ll even get with you to demonstrate updates on our ongoing project, if it’s a big one. Of course, this offer is only for businesses in the Jacksonville or Saint Augustine region of Northeastern Florida.

I’m competent in C#, PHP, and I can write Java, but it’s been a while. My T-SQL and overall database knowledge is legendary (in my own mind). Check out my career history for more information.

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When I started here, it was called American Heritage Life Insurance. I guess Allstate bought them, but that transition is a blur.

The programming department at this division was huge. There had to be almost twenty of us, and that was just the programming staff. They had a dedicated testing department, and a full graphics development team. They even had a separate department for database administration. Allstate was the largest technology team I ever worked with, even to this day.

This job taught me a lot. I was first introduced to deep SQL (Database) development here, like views, indexes, stored procedures. They showed me the importance of performance minded code. My disturbing love for database development began at Allstate.

Allstate catapulted me into a more rounded understand of the inner-working of business. I was thrown into the deep end of knowledge about privacy, HIPAA compliance, disconnected data, documentation, meetings, encryption, screen scraping, and bureaucracy… so much bureaucracy. Things moved so fast, most of it is an obfuscated mess.

After two years, they placed me on a special projects team focused on rewriting their legacy Visual Basic code into the new C# development platform. That was a steep learning curve, and I’m a much better developer because of it.

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I worked at Leonard’s Photography, a family owned business, for about seven years. That was easily the longest job stint of my life. The company’s main focus is school and military photography… think Year Books. They create merchandise as well, but photography is their bread and butter.

My duties at Leonard’s were primarily database related, MySQL, MariaDB, and Microsoft SQL. There was also a lot of text data that needed to be manipulated into the system. Mostly DBF, CSV, and Excel (XLS) files.

My biggest accomplishment at Leonard’s was the creation of a data synchronization program, written in C#. It maintained one large database of almost all the company’s information by monitoring for changes in text data and replicating them, in real-time, into the database.

Why did I leave?

On occasion, I was tasked with working in “the field”. I’d go to school photo sessions and monitor the photo archiving software and hardware. This triggered a desire to work outside my dimly lit cubicle. After a few years, sitting at a desk became quite unpleasant. I wanted to get out more, but pay increases made me too expensive for that.

The biggest reason I left? COVID. It changed everything and everyone. Life never went back to normal. I felt isolated from people while at work.

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Being a closeted database developer has led to many tech jobs, but oddly, none of them were purely database jobs. It had been a career long dream to work only with databases. I even tried to force that with one company. They ignored my threats. Always the programmer, never the dedicated database guru.

Most of my experience revolves around MySQL and her better looking sister, MariaDB. In the past, in much larger companies, I’ve worked a lot with Microsoft SQL Servers, but they’re high maintenance, and a little too expensive to keep happy. I can’t afford a relationship with Oracle, but her cousins are way hotter anyway.

My most recent database developer dalliance is with an ongoing personal project, a complicated system that helps my writing. It uses tables, views, and stored procedures to make sure I don’t overuse words, start paragraphs with duplicate words, use similes. It parses out my dialog and narration, grading them differently, and an f-ton more.

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Factotum [ fak-toh-tuhm ]
A person with an eclectic and diverse list of hobbies, activities, and responsibilities. In this case, a man with diagnosed, but unmedicated, ADHD and a storied history of rabbit hole researching until he knows just enough to pass as satisfactory.

I embody the consummate definition of “Jack of All Trades, Master of None”. Unable to focus on any one thing for an extended period of time, my chaotic brain juggles a myriad of disparate projects with all the skill and dexterity of a disturbingly jovial circus clown.

The Writer

I write books. They aren’t for everyone. The absolute best way to get to know me is by reading one, or all of them. If you do, keep in mind that my main characters are all different subsets of my personality. You can find links to my books and some descriptions here. Please review the content warnings if you’re the sensitive type, or a liberal, or a conservative, or religious, or atheist, or pagan… there’s something to offend everyone!

Hey men! Are there any male readers left? My books may be of particular interest to you, so you should give them a try. You might be surprised to find there are still a few authors who aren’t obsessed with pandering to the hate-all-men era of entertainment.

The Software Developer

There are a lot of programmers who write books. I wonder if anyone ever studied the reason behind this. I’ve been writing software for over 30 years. My software experience started with QBasic, then moved on to Visual Basic, VB.Net, Java, C#, and PHP. Microsoft C# is, by far, my favorite programming language, with PHP running a distant second. My real computer related obsession lies in database design, performance, and scalability. Check out my job history and follow the rabbit hole that has been my career for decades.

If you’re looking for a software developer or database administrator (contract of employee), I’m available for work nation wide, but focused on companies located within the Jacksonville and Saint Augustine areas.

The Hobbyist

This part of my life is a mess of unrelated things. I own a business, work on cars, tear down and rebuild kitchens and rooms, cook, and my latest weird dalliance… I’m trying to make Viking jewelry.

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My online business resume displays an overview of companies I’ve worked for and job descriptions I held for the past 25 years. They range from teaching network security to software development in Minnesota and Florida. I’m currently available for contract work nation wide, but mostly interested in companies located within the Jacksonville and Saint Augustine areas.

This is only a very brief summary of my total business resume. Individual projects required teams of developers, multiple technologies, and servers spanning servers across the United States.

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