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, which is only a block from where I'm living these days. 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, but I don't 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. 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!