Who Is The Mystery Person Behind [email protected]?
6/12/2018
Unknown
If you’ve ever wondered who is behind the “Regards, Support” signature (and let’s be
honest, you probably haven’t, it’s cool though) it’s me. Hi, my name is Ann. /waves.
A little bit about me, my passion is behind-the-scenes problem-solving. If there is a solution, I will find it, darn it. Things that really bug me (pun intended): things that should work, don’t. Seriously, one time a friend couldn’t get their fancy-smancy alarm clock set correctly and wouldn’t let me give it a go. When we were leaving, I faked a reason to run back inside and fixed the alarm clock in under one minute. Again, that kind of thing drives me bonkers. Yes, I used the word “bonkers”.
My background, I grew up playing a fair amount (a lot) of video games (aka puzzles, aka problem-solving), played a variety of roles in tech theatre (sound board operator to backstage manager), and once owned a copy of a book on ethical hacking.
I have a number of classic game favorites such as Super Mario, Sonic, Toe Jam & Earl, etc. However, one of my all-time favorite game series is Portal. It’s a humorous puzzle game in which you are a mere test subject at the behest of an AI entity known as GlaDOS, who relentlessly mocks you but keeps promising cake at the end (it’s a lie). I heart puzzles and sardonic humor. And no, I don’t have a Portal mug, doormat, plushie, action figure, sound scheme for my phone and computer, or plan to one day run the Monumental Marathon (half) cosplaying as the main charachter…
Anyway…
Because of gaming, I received my first lesson in tech at a young age. It was simply how input/output worked by learning how to connect the NES and VCR to the TV simultaneously. I consider this my starting point on my path to logic and technology. I was five.
When I wasn’t at home playing games, I could often be found at the local library on the computer. I did everything from playing games, exploring the file system, to typing my homework, even math. I spent so much time on the computers there (pre-internet, gasp!). I might have even been occasionally scolded by the librarian for hogging them. Consequently, it’s one reason I have been able to clock myself at 90 wpm on a good day (a really good day); I’ve never taken a keyboarding class (another story, another time). Related, my first computer class of any kind of was Computer Programming I as a senior in high school; it was a piece of cake.
Our family purchased our first home computer around 1997 (age 12); I set up everything. It also just so happened that right at that time the “world wide web” was becoming more accessible, courtesy of the AOL disc torrent. Hello young internet and plethora of information. Also, a lot of arguments about tying up the phone line.
Now, with the internet at my fingertips, I started playing around with making personal web pages, tinkering with HTML and some Java applets. Remember geocities? That. My flavor was Sailor Moon fan pages. I learned to love playing with code. Little did I know how those ridiculous fan pages would come into play 20 years later.
Despite all that fun, art was my focus, specifically drawing. No, I totally didn’t draw a lot of Sailor Moon fan art (yes, yes I did). The aspiration was to become an animation artist. However, as life goes, my attempt at a college degree in art fell through due to funding.
After a brief hiatus and turning 24 (now an independent in FAFSA’s eyes), I began to explore other career choices. I may have also realized that the art degree was unlikely to get me far and starving artist was no longer as romantic as it once was in high school. I looked into academia, biology research, and more, feeling a bit clueless about my direction. As the Cheshire cat once said, “Oh, you're sure to [get somewhere], if only you walk long enough.”
Then it finally dawned on me, “Derp, computer science.” /facepalm. I’ve always had an aptitude toward tech and problem-solving but I thought of it as more of a hobby. As much as I like to problem solve, this took me a while to figure out; it’s difficult to be objective about your subjective experience. With some outside objective help, I explored various computer science fields, system admin, security, database admin, etc.
And then, I rediscovered code. It resonated with me; I remembered the countless hours I spent tinkering with code on those silly fan pages. This was it. I made my decision, I am now an aspiring software developer.
Through happenstance, I fell into Ruby as a language and ran with it. If it was the “wrong” language for me, then I still learned something and could continue to move forward. As a self-described autodidact, I made use of local and online resources and started teaching myself, because yah, student loan debt, no thank you.
Since a lot of trial and error (which is exactly what software development is) and odd jobs (retail, banking, office manager, barista) I somehow navigated into AddressTwo as your CRM support specialist and switched to front end coding languages. I finally have my foot in the door of the tech industry. And for the first time, I absolutely love what I do (unlike retail), not that it doesn’t come with it’s own unique set of problems and headaches, but the problems I like to solve and the headaches I can handle.
 |
| Hi I'm Ann! |
A little bit about me, my passion is behind-the-scenes problem-solving. If there is a solution, I will find it, darn it. Things that really bug me (pun intended): things that should work, don’t. Seriously, one time a friend couldn’t get their fancy-smancy alarm clock set correctly and wouldn’t let me give it a go. When we were leaving, I faked a reason to run back inside and fixed the alarm clock in under one minute. Again, that kind of thing drives me bonkers. Yes, I used the word “bonkers”.
My background, I grew up playing a fair amount (a lot) of video games (aka puzzles, aka problem-solving), played a variety of roles in tech theatre (sound board operator to backstage manager), and once owned a copy of a book on ethical hacking.
I have a number of classic game favorites such as Super Mario, Sonic, Toe Jam & Earl, etc. However, one of my all-time favorite game series is Portal. It’s a humorous puzzle game in which you are a mere test subject at the behest of an AI entity known as GlaDOS, who relentlessly mocks you but keeps promising cake at the end (it’s a lie). I heart puzzles and sardonic humor. And no, I don’t have a Portal mug, doormat, plushie, action figure, sound scheme for my phone and computer, or plan to one day run the Monumental Marathon (half) cosplaying as the main charachter…
Anyway…
Because of gaming, I received my first lesson in tech at a young age. It was simply how input/output worked by learning how to connect the NES and VCR to the TV simultaneously. I consider this my starting point on my path to logic and technology. I was five.
When I wasn’t at home playing games, I could often be found at the local library on the computer. I did everything from playing games, exploring the file system, to typing my homework, even math. I spent so much time on the computers there (pre-internet, gasp!). I might have even been occasionally scolded by the librarian for hogging them. Consequently, it’s one reason I have been able to clock myself at 90 wpm on a good day (a really good day); I’ve never taken a keyboarding class (another story, another time). Related, my first computer class of any kind of was Computer Programming I as a senior in high school; it was a piece of cake.
Our family purchased our first home computer around 1997 (age 12); I set up everything. It also just so happened that right at that time the “world wide web” was becoming more accessible, courtesy of the AOL disc torrent. Hello young internet and plethora of information. Also, a lot of arguments about tying up the phone line.
Now, with the internet at my fingertips, I started playing around with making personal web pages, tinkering with HTML and some Java applets. Remember geocities? That. My flavor was Sailor Moon fan pages. I learned to love playing with code. Little did I know how those ridiculous fan pages would come into play 20 years later.
Despite all that fun, art was my focus, specifically drawing. No, I totally didn’t draw a lot of Sailor Moon fan art (yes, yes I did). The aspiration was to become an animation artist. However, as life goes, my attempt at a college degree in art fell through due to funding.
After a brief hiatus and turning 24 (now an independent in FAFSA’s eyes), I began to explore other career choices. I may have also realized that the art degree was unlikely to get me far and starving artist was no longer as romantic as it once was in high school. I looked into academia, biology research, and more, feeling a bit clueless about my direction. As the Cheshire cat once said, “Oh, you're sure to [get somewhere], if only you walk long enough.”
Then it finally dawned on me, “Derp, computer science.” /facepalm. I’ve always had an aptitude toward tech and problem-solving but I thought of it as more of a hobby. As much as I like to problem solve, this took me a while to figure out; it’s difficult to be objective about your subjective experience. With some outside objective help, I explored various computer science fields, system admin, security, database admin, etc.
And then, I rediscovered code. It resonated with me; I remembered the countless hours I spent tinkering with code on those silly fan pages. This was it. I made my decision, I am now an aspiring software developer.
Through happenstance, I fell into Ruby as a language and ran with it. If it was the “wrong” language for me, then I still learned something and could continue to move forward. As a self-described autodidact, I made use of local and online resources and started teaching myself, because yah, student loan debt, no thank you.
Since a lot of trial and error (which is exactly what software development is) and odd jobs (retail, banking, office manager, barista) I somehow navigated into AddressTwo as your CRM support specialist and switched to front end coding languages. I finally have my foot in the door of the tech industry. And for the first time, I absolutely love what I do (unlike retail), not that it doesn’t come with it’s own unique set of problems and headaches, but the problems I like to solve and the headaches I can handle.
If there is a solution, I will find it.