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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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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Childhood

Adrian was born November 30th, 1968 in a small, at the time, town east of San Francisco, California. When he was six, his family fell on hard financial times and moved to suburban Minneapolis. While his father worked multiple jobs to keep his family fed, they hopped around the Twin Cities metropolitan area for the next twelve years. They never living in the same place for long.

Uprooted at every important stage of his early development, finding and keeping friends was difficult. During his middle school years, the world was on the cusp of a global technological revolution, the introduction of personal computers. Attracted to their limitless potential, Adrian taught himself to write computer code by dissecting existing games, rewriting them, and making them better…in his personal opinion. Developing software became his drug of choice, and that addiction persists to this day.

Adult Years

In the nineteen-nighties, he married his high school girlfriend, and they began their family soon after. Minnesota winters took their toll on him and his wife, so they followed his retired parents to Jacksonville Florida and settled down just south of the city. There, he vowed to let his children grow up without the distress of abandoning friends that made his young life so miserable.

Starting in his teens, he dabbled with writing on and off, but never applied any serious focus to it. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic shook our world, and changed everything. His once vibrant office culture assumed a morbid, lonely darkness. Businesses faltered. Nothing felt stable anymore. It was in this chaos he, like thousands of others, wrote a book.

Still a software developer today, but mostly in the field of database design and performance, Adrian is a published author, an aging father, a dog owner, and a resourceful jack of all trades.

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