- Who Am I?
- Where Am I?
- What Do I Like?
- Why Computers?
- Where Has OSU has taken me?
- What Do I Do?
- What Technologies Do I Like?
- What Projects Seem Cool?
- What Do I Look Like?
Who Am I?
Hello! My name is Devon Thomas. I am a Navy Veteran who has been coding since I was 12 years old! I’ve had various employments ranging from Cashier to IT to Instructor.
Where Am I?
While I used to live in Roseville, California, I decided to move to Oregon to start taking classes at OSU. I currently live in Albany, right next to Corvallis, but I intend on moving again to get a little closer to campus.
I work and operate in Pacific time (PDT)
What Do I Like?
It should really come as a surprise to no one that I like what most technologists like. I enjoy playing video games and coding. I hate the sunlight, as it burns my incredibly pale skin.
I grew up playing Minecraft and Roblox, which were the games of choice for most kids in the late 2000s. Times haven’t changed much, have they? My only blessing is that we didn’t have Fortnite back then.
Why Computers?
I got my start with computers when my mother realized that I needed guidance with my gaming addiction. I often spent time in class doodling away new ideas for video games instead of paying attention. For this reason, my mother decided to bait me into programming by getting me into a game development camp called ID Tech (A company I would later work for). I was told I would get to bring my doodles to life, only to be faced with the purest form of math. Weirdly enough, it worked! I took an interest in C++ at 12 years old and would write out lengthy projects over the course of several months, only to drop the projects 10,000 lines in as my distraction-prone brain led me to another project. I became so susceptible to these distractions that I accidentally learned almost every mainstream coding language (C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Python, ActionScript 3.0, Lua, and Ruby at some point).
My family gave me the opportunity that very few get, a full ride through college so long as I maintain a part-time job. The rebellious teenager that I was, I decided to go nuclear and join the Military. Like many others, I fell for the recruiter’s promise that my skillset would be used well and that I would see the world. The military did neither of those for me. I signed a contract as an IT for 4 years, hoping to work on computers, only to be assigned a role in the radio room (of which I scored low) on the USS San Antonio; noting my lack of talent in radio technology, I was put to work mainly doing hard labor. The USS San Antonio was an infamously un-operational ship that could not float, and for 4 years I never saw her float once. I still managed to get promoted to petty officer, scoring highly in computer technology and lowly in radio technology.
After 4 years of abuse from my command, newfound back and joint pain, and a developed taste for alcoholism, I decided against renewing my contract. The military has fulfilled one obligation, however, and that is paying for my college.
(I don’t drink anymore, thanks Mom)
Now, I am a burnt-out 26-year-old wondering what I’m supposed to be doing with all this stuff.
Where Has OSU has taken me?
Now, that’s a great question. I knew that quite a bit of college is fluff, much like high school was. So, getting the general bits of education out of the way was my first goal. I attended Sierra College in Rocklin, California. After knocking out an associate in Computer Science, I decided to come here!
I spent only one year at OSU to achieve senior status, so my perspective may be a little skewed. Most of my classes have been repetitions of what I’ve already learned or only slight variances from that.
At this point, I feel I’ve taken the same basics/introductory course to so many different computer subjects that I am a jack of all trades. But a Master of nothing. What is the saying… Good at many, Great at none?
I will soon begin Cybersecurity courses specialized courses. There, I hope to find a chord that resonates with me.
What do I do?
To keep it simple, I am a full-time student at OSU using the post-9/11 GI bill to help subsidize my lifestyle.
After my honorable discharge from the military, I decided to work as an instructor at ID Tech for a year. It was good fun, but it didn’t pay the bills. After being offered much better pay by an opposing company, I worked for a contracting gig for a tutoring site called TestingMom.
The two years I spent as an instructor are what I feel to have been the most important thing I have ever done. Giving kids the hopes and dreams with technology that I once had was truly awesome. Having kids ask, “Is it possible to do this?” and almost always being able to say, “Yes,” and seeing their reactions? Priceless.
Then, the IRS came after me for tax evasion. Okay, maybe it wasn’t that bad, but I did have to pay $3,000 in taxes unexpectedly. For this reason, I don’t do contract gigs.
What Tech do I like?
I don’t know if there’s ever been a type of technology presented to me that I didn’t think was cool.
I suppose I’ll state the obvious, AI is incredibly cool to me. Automation, in a general sense, is the goal of any and all industries. I feel that, with artificial intelligence, the realms of possibilities are endless. It’s a real shame that I haven’t had a class assigned to simply AI, since I really want to learn about it (I suppose I’ll have to on my own time (once I am done procrastinating everything else)).
What Projects seem cool?
Given my interest in AI, I was looking at quite a few of the AI-centered projects. There was one that seemed fun yet doable, where GPT would be used through an API to help an individual with learning a new language. Given that ChatGPT is already quite fluent in almost every language, setting a project like this up is simply a matter of good planning and (although I hate the term) “Prompt-engineering”. I even tested it myself directly through GPT’s interface, asking it to pretend we were in a scenario where my language would be tested. It worked beautifully in both French and Spanish. So, given that we set up a decent virtual environment, the rest should flow pretty easily.
Another one that interested me was Machine Learning Breakout. In this project, we would be using Unity’s ML-Agents to learn Atari’s Breakout. Eventually, the agent would even be able to compete with and hopefully beat a human player! This seemed exciting because it’s almost like teaching a kid how to ride a bike—except instead of a child, it’s a small computer!
What Do I Look Like?
