About
Today I am a Software Engineer for the Walt Disney Internet Group, but ironically enough I started my career as a traditional illustrator. Way back before the tech bubble burst in 2000, an art-college friend talked me into learning HTML and taking my designs to the web. From there, he dragged me into a really cool web animation program called Flash, which was relatively unknown at the time and was a bit more cumbersome to use, and eventually PHP and MySQL. Landing my first job as a web designer, I worked for a small design firm out of Orlando, FL. There, my knowledge of programming deepened, but I still retained many of my design roots. After nearly five years there, I moved on to a government contractor to work on a computer based training tool for the U.S. Navy’s Basic Engineering Common Course. Ironically enough, I was hired as a Flash Designer, but was quickly shuffled over to development when they learned that I could program. And I haven’t looked back.
A little more than a year later I was picked up by the Walt Disney Internet Group and assigned to the rearchitecture of Walt Disney World’s Booking Engine. That’s the site you visit if you want to make a reservation to visit Walt Disney World. During that project, I was provided tasks that helped to improve my CSS and programming skills, as well as develop my knowledge and understanding of AJAX and standard Javascript. After the completion of the booking engine project, I was given the lead developer role for the Disneyland Booking Engine. Given a promotion to Software Engineer in our Central Engineering office, I now play a major role in the development of our video player platform.
With extensive knowledge in several layers of interactive development and engineering, my goal is to provide back to the development community some knowledge that I have gained over the years. There have been numerous resources and individuals that have supported both my career development and intellectual understanding. If at any time you have questions or comments about what you find here, please let me know.
Cheers.