Who I am

For those of you that haven't noticed yet: My name is John Weaver, and (among other things) I'm a software developer, entrepreneur, and returning college student who lives in Olympia, Washington. This is where I am going to relate some anecdotes about myself that will hopefully give you a better idea of who it is that is writing all of this text hanging out here in cyberspace.

What I've been up to recently

Right now I'm working on a few different projects involving programming in one way or another. I'm also a full-time student at South Puget Sound Community College. I served two tours overseas for the US Army; both times I intentionally transferred to a unit that was either probably going to be deployed, or was already deployed overseas when I joined it. I'm not past, or at least I wasn't a few years ago, seeking a good thrill or rush. I really like music, but I'm not as good at playing anything as I'd like. I own a guitar, and I'm finally getting around to play it often enough to build up callouses on my fingers. I discovered an enjoyment of the drums through Rock Band 2, and I'm planning on building my own custom electric drums from an Arduino and some other hardware, but I have a basic set of e-drums to practice on until then. I've been an atheist since 2004.

How I got involved with computers in the first place

My dad bought my first computer for me when I was 13. My first computer was a 100Mhz Pentium Packard Bell, with 8 MB of RAM, a 14.4K bps modem, and a 8x CDROM drive. I learned how to program from a televised college course in C programming back in 1996, plus a lot of online resources. Once I started looking for good compilers and other software tools, it was pretty clear that I could try to convince my dad to spend a bunch of money he didn't really have to buy development software for Windows, or I could get FreeBSD which had a bunch of different compilers and turned out to let me get better use out of my computer. I got my FreeBSD 2.2.2 CDROM from Walnut Creek CDROM in August, 1997. Of course time went by, and I got better computers. Eventually I switched to Linux in 2004, which is in no way related to me becoming an atheist the same year.

How I went from college, to aimlessness, to being aimed at, to living on a boat, and back again.

I started college in 2000 at Skagit Vally College, at the Oak Harbor campus. I was originally going to go into the nursing program, which is why I moved to Oak Harbor instead of near the main campus at Mount Vernon. I was only 16 at the time, and I was thinking about how I was going to support myself in two years. I eventually decided that I'd risk it, and pursue a Computer Science degree instead. I did fairly well my first quarter, but I bit off too much for the summer quarter and dropped everything but 2 credits. I registered for a full course load for the fall quarter, but I don't think I was really prepared for the courses I was taking at that point. I earned some more credits the following summer, and then joined the Army Reserve in September, 2001.

When I got back from basic training and AIT, I looked for a something easy to do for work and found it at McDonald's. The next year and a half I spent going from job to job, trying to get by. I eventually figured out what I wanted to do with my life, and decided that the best way to get there was to use the programming skills I had. And then we invaded Iraq. I decided to put those plans on hold (for the most part) and transfer into a local National Guard artillery unit, figuring I had a good chance to get deployed fairly soon if I did. The orders for my new unit to be deployed came about four months after that, and several months of training followed. I came back after a year, spent about six months doing odd jobs and working on some of my personal programming projects, and then requested a transfer to a unit that was going overseas. I met up with my newest unit at the Al-Asad Air Base in western Iraq, and spent about four months with them driving across the Iraqi country-side, while trying not to get blown up.

When I came back the last time, I had enough money to set myself up for a while. I bought a 26 foot sailboat and started living on it; I also started doing contract programming work in earnest to support myself. I had to get part-time work once to keep myself afloat (I couldn't resist the pun), but was getting by alright. This last August, 2009, I sold my sailboat and wound-up moving into an apartment and finally getting back to college. I should be getting my Bachelor's in Computer Science by about April, 2011. Finally!