Education
I graduated from the New England Institute of Technology in 2005 and earned an Associate Degree in Multimedia & Web Design Technology with a focus on web development. During my time I learned the ins and outs of web design and development, from basic HTML and programming, to dynamic HTML and CSS, to database structure, to advanced PHP and ASP programming and best practices.
Early Years
After graduation, I started working for parsonsKellogg, a company based in East Providence, Rhode Island. I honed my skills there, taking on responsibilities such as photography of merchandise, designs of virtual mock-ups, development of online storefronts, production of print and online catalogs and flyers, and recreation of logos in scalable vector format.
For years I also worked as an independent contractor, both on my own and for John Flanders Internet Consulting, based in Portsmouth, RI. I took on projects both small and large in scale, utilizing PHP (and sometimes ASP if altering existing code). I have created company web sites with search functionality, back-end administrative tools, and e-commerce storefronts.
In 2010, I created STO Wiki, a wiki for the game Star Trek Online. The wiki was later purchased by Curse LLC (later Gamepedia) and is now a part of their Fandom gaming wiki network. For several months I continued to administrate and maintain the wiki, until they bid me farewell and terminated my contract once they had what they needed. Hey, it's business.
My next position was as a Web Designer for BZ Results (now under the ADP Dealer Services umbrella) from October 2010 through August 2011. I was a contractor that utilized CSS to create and alter the design and layout for new and existing auto dealership websites. I became familiar with their proprietary content management system over the course of my contract there. From May to August of 2012, I worked for Nokia’s Pulse project (now defunct), which was a social networking site at the time that was to be available for both desktop and mobile (for Nokia phone users, of course).
Health & Wellness
One of my fondest experiences was my role as Software Developer for ShapeUp (now Virgin Pulse) from November 2012 through July 2016. While there, I oversaw the development of numerous solo projects, served as a team player for a handful of larger-scale projects, and repaired defects on the proprietary ShapeUp PHP MVCS framework. My proudest work, however, was in the design and development of administrative tools for other departments, most importantly the Participant Support team. The interdepartmental cooperation and communication was second to none.
After ShapeUp, I had a brief stint at Preventure, Inc. (hilariously, now also Virgin Pulse), where I studied the Salesforce development process and learned React.js on the job. Preventure, as you could probably tell, did much the same thing as ShapeUp once did: focus on the health and wellbeing of company employees through a shared online social experience. Sir Richard Branson struck again!
The Drupal Era
My Drupal experience began when I began my role as Drupal Developer for (add)ventures (more formally known as Advertising Ventures), a wonderful branding and marketing firm that catered to such clients as Stretch-Tite (for whom I made a custom shipping calculate module that they promptly discarded) and CVS (and its subsidiaries, such as SilverScript and Coram). I worked with a team of talented developers, designers, project managers, and UX consultants to develop new Drupal-based corporate and ecommerce websites. I was proud to have had a personal hand in the upgrade of the CVS Health corporate site from Drupal 7 to 8. While at (add)ventures I earned my Acquia Drupal 8 Developer Certification and was promoted to Senior Drupal Developer alongside one other colleague as we oversaw numerous teams working on multiple projects at any given time.
After an amiable layoff—err, parting of ways, I landed a role as Custom Software Engineering Special for Accenture Federal Services, a company that contracts teams of developers and other project participants for (you guessed it) federal website projects. During my year-plus at AFS, I was proud to be part of a diverse team of Drupal developers and other experts that worked primarily on the SEC and its various sites and intranets beyond just their homepage. I held a Public Trust clearance while here, and would happily work there again.
I have nearly 20 years of experience in Drupal 8–10, PHP (I started when the move to PHP 5 was a grudging one), HTML5 (including Accessibility and other semantic best practices), JavaScript (I'm working on a Monopoly clone made entirely in HTML, CSS, and Javascript that's nearly done), CSS3 (including animations), MySQL (don't ever look at the makeup of my Xylot Themes database), jQuery, React.js, TailwindCSS, and Bootstrap 5. I am highly experienced in using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. My editor of choice is Visual Studio Code.
As the great Brick Tamland once said: “I love LAMP!” I know he was talking about the Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP stack. I love LAMP, too, Brick.