Who Is This "Luke" Character?

The Obligatory Biography

Quick Facts

• I'm a Tar Heel born, I'm a Tar Heel bred,
  and when I die I'm a Tar Heel dead. [?]
• Currently residing in Oklahoma.
• Sailed in the United States Navy from 1995-2006
• Development experience: 12 years.
• Yes, I enjoyed "The Notebook". So there.
• Favorite Sport: NASCAR (Like you didn't see that one coming.)
• Second Favorite Sport: Basketball (NBA: Hornets, College: it's Heels and Hawks)

On with the show...

I've been working with and developing web sites since 1996. Scary, huh? Yeah, well looking back on my initial work it certainly was scary, and a scary time on the internet to boot. I started out playing around, and haven't stopped since.

Initially all my efforts were trial and error, through self-paced study. In 2000, I learned the ways of some of the greats in the field, Zeldman and Meyer specifically, and have continued to study their offerings since. In late 2002, I was afforded some military sponsored education to further my knowledge. In addition, I'm a fully qualified unix administrator. At least that's what the papers from the military say, for all the schools they've sent me through. Network administration, security, as well as electronic repair were the focus of my day job, with the additional benefit of being able to work on various military related web sites (internal and external) during my military career.

I've worked with folks all over the globe, and completed well over a hundred projects during this time. While many have faded and passed on to the great trash bin in the sky, as a lot of sites do, there are still a few of the old sites kicking around.

I've worked for design firms, have been sub-contracted by design firms, and have also worked directly with some of the leaders in their various industry field. It's been quite the challenge, but at the same time it has provided many rewarding opportunities as well.

** New: Summer 2008
Currently, I'm also working most of a typical "work" week (or about half of my actual working hours) for one of the finest WordPress MU development firms, Incsub. By typical week, we're talking what most people consider full time. In the development world, however, if you're not sleeping you're usually working. I'm enjoying my time there, and couldn't be more excited about working with them throughout the week. Once I convince them to turn completely to Mac, victory will be mine.

While under the gun over at Incsub, I'm working on a ton of great code. Not excluding such things as Edublogs, currently boasting almost 200,000 blogs (powered by a nice cluster of web and database servers), as well as other great projects coming down the pipes.

Personally Speaking

In my spare time (OK, what's that?) I like to hunt, fish and I'm an avid movie and music enthusiast. As long as none of the above interfere with NASCAR, of course.

I'm sure I've forgotten something here, but since you've probably quit reading several paragraphs ago, you hopefully won't notice.

P.S. If you can't tell, I have quite the sense of humor and have been accused of having an educated rear-end on more than one occasion. Oh yes, and I don't do pictures either, if you couldn't tell by the mugshot above.