Hello, World!

I'm a software developer in Portland, Oregon and a panelist on the Greater Than Code podcast. I primarily work on custom internal applications; I'm strongly motivated to write clean, maintainable code; and I've been working in Ruby (mostly Rails) since 2006.

Attention, Recruiters!

While I try to answer all inquiries, it'll save us both some time if you read the FAQ before emailing me. In particular, please do not contact me about jobs that require relocation or significant amounts of travel.

I'm currently employed full-time, and not actively looking for a change. Still, feel free to contact me—there's a chance I'll know someone who meets your needs.

My Backstory

I stumbled into a programming career by way of Microsoft Access 97. After a few years building tools for small workgroups, I went back to school for a computer science degree. I graduated cum laude from Portland State with honors from the CS department in 2007. Since then, I've mostly been writing web applications using Ruby on Rails, specializing primarly in back-end work. All along, I've found a great deal of satisfaction in automating drudge work so people can spend more time doing interesting jobs.

I've greatly enjoyed mentoring in various forms: onboarding an experienced software developer who was new to Ruby and web development; advising code school students; helping out small groups in "single serving" environments like user group meetings or training workshops. At larger scales, I've also done a bit of public speaking, made a screencast or two, and written a rather popular site about version control software.

What's Here?

Me, Elsewhere

I'm a regular panelist on the Greater Than Code podcast, so you'll probably learn a few interesting things about me by listening to that. :)

Most of my work lives in private Git repositories and secured Rails applications, so my public GitHub profile is rather sparse. For some reason, I do still have a profile on LinkedIn as well.

That said, these GitHub repositories will give you some idea of how my coding style has evolved over the years: Hypercuke, Cordon, Memonymous, Medievalistic, Ladd's Graph, Scotland Yard, and HighlandAR. (And yes, that last one is a joke.)