My name is Andrew, welcome to my tech blog.

I am an Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator with Windows 2000 and XP, a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist for Windows Vista, and further certifications for Maintaining and Managing Windows 2003 Environments, A+ and Network+.

A number of years ago, my best friend told me that I should become a programmer, knowing my knack for being able to read a technical textbook once and be able to apply it immediately. He told me I would have a natural talent for it. At first I dismissed it as misguided praise, but the next job I took was for a local web application developer firm where I often had to troubleshoot server performance issues based on lines of Java code or SQL queries. Much of it went over my head, especially as far as the database went (due to the fact that we were using an Oracle database for geospatial data) but despite being no Java programmer, I could still decipher what the code was trying to do. So I spent the next two years passively reverse engineering Java code and managing an Oracle database server among a plethora of other tasks.

Then my aforementioned friend presented me with an opportunity to work on a programming project and get paid as I learn. I could hardly pass up the chance to work for my best friend, so I agreed. Since then I’ve worked with PHP and ColdFusion as well as some database design.
Which pretty much brings us to now.