Mary Jo Sminkey wrote: > The thread on how you got into computers made me think about how I got into > ColdFusion as well, since for me, they were very much tied together. Anyone > else remember their first CF (or perl, or whatever you started with) web > application?
I am going to blend the original topic to which I never got around to posting and this one into one combined biography. I got started with computers ~1980 as a hobby with the venerable Trash 80 CoCo. Which had a great BASIC tutorial and reference book set that I still wish modern tomes would emulate. When I started high school in the fall of 1982 it was the first year that the school offered a computer science course. As such seniors got first shot at the available spots, then juniors, then sophomores by this time there where only two spots open and they went to the freshmen that had the best math grades from eight grade. Myself and a friend who went on to be our Valedictorian in 1986. The school used Commodore 64's for the class so I upgrade to one of these at home. After two weeks, the instructor got tired of the other freshman and myself from finishing all the class assignments in ten to fifteen minutes and then spending the rest of the hour doing the work for the seniors, juniors and sophomores. So he created a CS2, independent study course for the two of us. We where tasked with creating an application for the grade school secretary to schedule parent-teacher conferences so that parents who had two or more children attending school could sequentially conference with all their kids teachers. We then spent the rest of the year developing an application that I would later learn was a specific purpose relational database to allow the secretary to input teachers, parents/students, conference schedules and breaks and it would spit out a time table of appointments. While I enjoyed programming and playing with computers, I enjoyed cooking more and planned to make a career in the Culinary Arts. My parents wanted to me to have a college education though, so I went to school and got an Bachelor of Liberal Arts in University Studies. A degree that allowed me to select my own focus which I combined business courses and what culinary/home economy courses the school offered with just one or two computer science courses. I then followed this education up with a degree from the Culinary Arts Institute in Hyde Park, New York. I then started my career in some nice kitchens in the Northern California Foothills of the Gold Rush region. Fast forward several years and I was in an automobile accident where I was rear ended by an uninsured teenager when I slowed down so that I did not slam into the deer standing in the middle of the highway. This injured my back so that I find it very uncomfortable to stand on my feet for hours on end. After struggling a couple of more years with my painful back and realizing that unless you are Wolf Gang Puck or Ramsay it can be very difficult to support a family on a cooks income. You pretty much have to own your own place at least and I was not in a position to make that kind of transition. So I took an inventory of my skills and experiences to see what other type of jobs I could do. Based on my strong, mostly self taught computer skills, including office tools such as word processors, spread sheets and simple drawing tools I got myself some office work through temporary agencies. This eventually led me to an administrative assistant position with a local rocket engine company named Aerojet which hired me permanently The Marketing and Sales department I worked for there had a corporate intranet website that had not been updated for a couple of years. I took on the challenge of learning HTML and updating the stale content on these internal pages. Aerojet used ColdFusion 4.5 and after the fun of updating the static pages, I took on the task of creating a database of marketing information for the worlds rocket engines and creating a web based interface for the managers to browse, filter and update this data. A couple month stint at a failed internet start up, a couple of years making do with some meager independent contracting work through the dot-com crash of the turn of the century, and several years at a non-profit blood bank; I am still using ColdFusion, 8 now, here at the State of California. ........... Is it kind of scary how enjoyable it was to write out my life's story to a bunch on strangers on a e-mail discussion list? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;192386516;25150098;k Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:259645 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
