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I was born in Columbus, Ohio, but while I was still a toddler, my parents moved to Logan, Ohio, where I spent the better part of my early life. In the summer of 1995, my family moved to Wilmore, Kentucky, for four years so my dad could attend seminary, which didn’t work out. As a result, we moved back to Logan in the summer of 1999. High school flat-out sucked, a period of my life I’d rather not talk about. Ever. My first year of college, technical college to be exact, wasn’t much better. By the end of my first quarter, I’d managed to land myself on academic probation courtesy of my stellar grade point average, an astounding one-point-zero. Right after I graduated high school though, my dad had taken a job teaching theatre at Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, so after my disaster of a year at Hocking College, I withdrew and moved back home. Best decision of my life.

My first summer in Pennsylvania was rough. I was struggling with the recovery process from a number of addictions I had developed over the last couple of years in Ohio, leading me to eventually become a recluse in my basement for a while. I worked at a Shop ‘N Save deli counter for a few months, but it really sucked, not to mention the working environment I landed in was unsavory at best, constantly working against me. At the end of the summer, I spontaneously decided to enroll at Westminster in their computer science program, which gave me a good excuse to quit the deli job. At the time, I didn’t really have any desire to earn a degree or anything, I just needed something to do for a year. I really wanted to attend SAE in New York City for audio engineering, but for one reason or another, that never happened. I ended up doing a second year at Westminster, still not really sure what I wanted to do with my life. By this time in my life, I had been designing websites off-and-on for about seven years. My time spent alone in my basement helped me to quickly improve my abilities to the point where I was getting offers for work. This was when I started my first freelancing business, Epic Designz (Don’t harass me about the ‘z’ on the end—it was cool at the time.)

I freelanced for a couple of years, mainly in the online gaming sector. I taught myself PHP and MySQL and was able to build a comprehensive system for managing online gaming team websites. This brought in a lot of business for a year or two until the online gaming craze took a turn for the worse. When this happened, I fell back on my skills as a vBulletin developer and started freelancing off of vBulletin.org. Again, this brought in a lot of business for a year or two until the economy tanked. It was my vBulletin skills that caught the attention of Angel Munoz, the CEO of NewWorld.

For a couple of years, I worked as a volunteer with the Cyberathlete Amateur League (CAL,) eventually managing the intermediate division of their Counter-Strike: Source (CS:S) league. CAL switched from Invision Power Board to vBulletin while I was an admin, but nobody was fluent enough with the vBulletin system to develop a style that matched the CAL website. I got bored one day and made two, one that matched the website and a darker version that was easier on the eyes. A few months later I was offered a job as a graphic designer for NewWorld, working mainly for their other gaming property, the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL.)

When I took the job with NewWorld, I pretty much stopped freelancing. I had a couple of established clients that I continued to work for off and on, but I didn’t undertake anything new. Almost four years have passed now since I started at NewWorld: both the CPL and CAL have been sold off, the Adrenaline Vault (Avault for short) was redeveloped and brought back from dead, and NewWorld.com was redeveloped from the ground up as well. It’s been a long ride at NewWorld, and I’m looking forward to seeing where the road goes from here.

In the summer of 2007, I took a digital photography course at Westminster to fulfill one of my liberal arts requirements. The condensed, six-week course that I didn’t really want to take turned into one of my favorite hobbies over the course of three years. I’ve moved up from my old Canon point-and-shoot camera to a Canon D-SLR with high-end, aspherical lenses, the lenses alone costing twice as much, and sometimes more, than my original point-and-shoot. I consider myself very much an amateur at photography still, and I don’t ever foresee wanting to go professional with it. I enjoy doing it far too much, and from my past experience, I never like things as much once they become a “job.” Since delving into photography, I’ve had one of my photos published in a coffee table that never made it to the market and won a slew of ribbons at the Lawrence County Fair last summer (August 2009,) where I took best of show for my picture of Cloud Gate in Chicago, Illinois. I’m looking forward to another slew of ribbons this year. I might even enter a couple of different fairs just for some variety.

My newest hobby is writing. After graduating from Westminster in May of 2009, I got stuck with having a year off before I started medical school at the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine in July of 2010. Needing to be working full-time in a position with benefits or enrolled full-time in school somewhere, I ended up attending Slippery Rock University for their master’s program in technical writing. It wasn’t my first choice, but one of the references I used on my resume in the spring of 2009 screwed me out of every job I applied for. It turned out to be in my best interests though, as I’ve really fallen in love with writing. One of my first courses at SRU, a seminar in creative writing, hooked me almost immediately. I’m about halfway done with my first novel now, a science-fiction book themed around real-life guardian angels. I have a short series planned out in my head, but I have a feeling medical school will put a kink in my plans for that.

My oldest, and most treasured hobby of all though, is my music. Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a drummer. At first, I wanted to play the quads in the Logan Marching Chieftains. When I got my chance in 1999, I sorely regretted that decision (Those damn things are heavy!) I started out at West Jessamine Middle School playing percussion. We had to do a little tryout on all of the instruments when sixth grade band started. I purposefully tanked each and every one in order to make sure I got to play percussion. Score. I really wanted to play drumset, but my parents didn’t buy me one until Christmas during my eighth grade year. I can still say to this very day, that was the best Christmas ever. I’m sure my mother’s pots, pans, and wooden spoons were all quite happy as well. Since then, I’ve played my drumset every opportunity I could get. During high school, I decided to teach myself how to play guitar and bass. I’m still not the greatest, but I can hold my own playing rhythm or bass.

Lately, I’ve taken to audio engineering. I started out with a two-channel Echo PCI card in my old Gateway, and now I’ve moved up to a sixteen-channel interface with my MacBook Pro. My first real engineering project is underway right now. I’m tracking, editing, and mixing my current band’s debut, full-length album. Diary of a Drive-Thru Confessional is due out later this spring, and so far things are going really great with it (Check out the audio engineering page for some samples.)

Not much else to say really. That’s pretty much the complete summary of my life thus far. I just live day-by-day now, never really know for certain how things are going to pan out. I like it this way though. It keeps life exciting.

Click here to download my resume (It's 40Kb in size for those who care.)

* I have an unhealthy obsession with penguins.
* I love fixing Asian food. Yes, I can cook.
* I'm engaged to the most amazing fiance ever.
* All of my computing equipment is named after characters from the Twilight saga. Edward is my MacBook Pro, Jasper is my DAW, Isabella is my junker laptop (soon to be my little sister's), Alice is my wireless network, and Carlisle is my Nintendo Wii (I would like to thank Dr. Shaffer and the Westminster College Linux Lab for the inspiration.)

The Guardians is a science-fiction novel that I'm currently working on. It's all about Eve, an immortal woman residing in present-day Chicago. Eve, a member of the Guardians, an ancient order bound to protecting the human race, is working towards a solution to one of the order's biggest problems, but when she finally has a major breakthrough in her research, things take a turn for the worst as she's confronted with the betrayal of a former flame.

The writing of the novel is really just getting underway, so a tentative date for completion is impossible to produce. Keep checking back for updates and previews though, as I'll post them as often as I possibly can.

I currently run a home studio from my apartment that is capable of simultaneously recording sixteen tracks of 96Khz/24-bit digital audio. I also have a mobile workstation with the same capabilities. I strictly use Tascam audio interfaces, a US-1641 for recording and a US-122L for editing, and sequence all of my work using Cakewalk's Sonar. I have a wide variety of microphones in my arsenal including a Shure Beta 57, a pair of CAD E-100's, a CAD KBM 412, an MXL R44, and a full set of Audio Technica drum microphones. My present setup features four different monitoring configurations and allows me to lay down tracks from the comfort of my apartment or out in the field.

At the current time, I'm not offering my audio engineering services to the public. I've only worked with bands that I've been a part of, lending a hand with my expertise as time allowed. Over the last few years, I've worked with Soulless, Onesize, and Frontline, which is the band that I'm currently playing with. Work on Frontline's debut album is currently underway with a release date slated for spring of 2010.

Idiot by Frontline
Only the Seasons Change by Frontline