More catchup

On the off chance that someone I know but haven’t talked to in a while should find me on the web via this page I thought it would be nice to give a short overview of my recent history. Read on…

About ten years ago I came to Cleveland from the bowels of Pennsylvania, or ‘Pennsyltucky’ as I fondly recall it. My goal was to get a degree from CWRU, but alas, that was not to be. CWRU is a cruel mistress and having run out of funds during my second year she threw me out like so much tissue paper.

Not to be deterred I took up residence at CSU (Cleveland State) for a few years until, already financially drained from CWRU, I really, really ran out of money. At which point I had little choice to but to enter the grind.

The first few years of that really sucked. I did computer support crap (not help desk, thank god), but still – I wasn’t a big fan. Then I ditched that to go join a startup company. That was also not a fun job, but I got quite a bit of experience with programming. My job title there was actually CIO, at least it was shortly before we shut down. My paper fortunes went up in a puff of optimism.

After a two month enforced vacation (actually I did have fun, went to visit a good friend in LA) I landed my current job at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. There I do what is called system integration, which is basically programming. That includes a fair amount of web work as well as connecting many of the clinical systems to one another and moving some 4 million medical records around every day.

Programming isn’t what I’ll do forever. I’ve got some secret plans, but in the mean time it’s a good field to use your brain, some creativity and the pay doesn’t suck. Oh, and the degree? That’s getting there too, slowly but surely. I’m in no hurry.