Provide a quick, creative biography in 140 characters or less.
More bioI am a full-time father of two, as well as a full-time developer for a state government.
My first experience with a personal computer was in the 4th grade, when I played "Oregon Trail" and "Where In the World Is Carmen Sandiego" (don't laugh) on the class' Apple II. At that point I knew I was interested in learning how to make computers "do something." Years passed until my first experience with programming. Although it was on my school-issued TI-83, I wrote some simple programs in TI-BASIC to help me save time on my algebra homework--not to cheat, rather to confirm :)
I didn't get any "real" programming experience until years after high school, when I began classes at a local junior college. Here I was exposed to C++ and Java. I felt like I was becoming a real programmer. I have since picked up some C and VB (6, VBA, and .NET), dabbled in PHP and Python, and I primarily program in C#. I enjoy being multilingual, even though I'm a firm believe that if you understand programming fundamentals, learning a new language boils down to syntax and semantics, and is not that difficult.
Although I don't consider myself an "expert", I really enjoy helping others. I'm sure on a subconscious level, there is some degree of satisfaction in knowing that I came up with the answer, but I truly love sharing my knowledge--I really can't wait until my kids start bringing home algebra homework :)
Even though the site is called "Experts Exchange," I believe that one can assist another by being a second set of eyes--perhaps by examining code, or by doing a web search for different terms not thought of by the questioner. I participate in many questions where I may not have a clue as to what the answer is, but I am willing to do a quick search to see what I can determine. I say this not for you to question my skills; rather I believe that helping someone arrive at an answer in place of just giving the answer can make one an "expert" as well. There are numerous people who participate here who "know their stuff," and I have nothing but respect for them, but I also give kudos to those who can help someone arrive at an answer, by whatever means.
So to all those who assist at EE, I offer my deepest respect; to all those who are new to EE, I say, "Welcome!"; and to those who know the ropes and challenge myself and the other experts, I say, "Thanks!" Without the whole, EE would be naught.
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EE Articles I Have Written
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• Introduction to XML Serialization in .NET
https://www.experts-exchange.com/A_3024.html
• Writing a Class/Struct to be XML Serialized and Creating a Class from a Schema
https://www.experts-exchange.com/A_3041.html
• Regular Expression Lookaround Demysytified
https://www.experts-exchange.com/A_4318.html
• How to Pass Data Between Forms in .NET
https://www.experts-exchange.com/A_4322.html
• 5 Common Exceptions in .NET (and How to Resolve Them)
https://www.experts-exchange.com/A_5389.html
• How to Spam the Experts (and Others)
https://www.experts-exchange.com/A_5411.html
• Getting Your Application Kinect-ed
https://www.experts-exchange.com/A_6259.html
• .NET Number to Text Converter
https://www.experts-exchange.com/A_7270.html
• A Beginner's Guide to LINQ, Part 1
https://www.experts-exchange.com/A_10170.html
• .NET Working Day Calculator
https://www.experts-exchange.com/A_26839.html