My mom had just brought home a giant box with a cow pattern. I excitedly ripped it open and inside I found (as you may have guessed if you’re as old as I am) a Gateway 2000 computer. I was over the moon with that thing. I spent many nights staring into its oversized CRT monitor discovering all I could about how it worked. I cracked open its comically enormous tower once, much to the chagrin of my parents, and ogled over its cards and rats nest of connection cables. Life was pretty good<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My love and curiosity for computers began with that lovable, off-white relic. I had never thought about actually pursuing a career in computers or software, mainly because I didn’t really think I was smart enough to do it. My math skills in high school were average at best, and guidance councilors I had spoken to had actually even tried to discourage me from it. But it wasn’t until I met my wife in 2017 that I decided to give it a try. She convinced me to take a couple community college classes in Java just to see if I had the aptitude for it. For the record, she always believed I did, I just needed to convince myself. I actually found myself taking to the basics of programming pretty easily. It wasn’t all impossibly complex mathematics like I had thought! During some of those classes, I also picked up a small Arduino starter kit. I had an interest in writing some code that actually made a real, physical thing do something. Those experiments further cemented my intent to make a career change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I graduated with my first bachelors degree in Broadcast Communication from Wets Liberty University in 2006. I am a newscast director for the local NBC affiliate in Pittsburgh, PA and I’ve been doing this now for about 10 years. For the most part it has been a pretty fun ride; I’ve made lasting friendships, covered some pretty awesome events, and even won two regional Emmy awards. But now it’s time for me to move on. My wife and I are expecting our first child (A girl!) this summer and I’m so excited!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ve had a great time at Oregon State. I think my favorite class I’ve taken thus far would have to be Intro to Parallel Programming. Professor Bailey is a fantastic instructor, and the subject matter was incredibly interesting to me! My primary career interests after graduation include pursuing a career in robotics and autonomous systems. I think that’s why I’d really like to be included in the music genre neural net project for CS 467. Developing\/training a neural network would look great on a resume, especially if I end up going the robotics route. Pittsburgh is becoming a serious robotics hub for the east coast and I really want to be a part of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The year was 1997… My mom had just brought home a giant box with a cow pattern. I excitedly ripped it open and inside I found (as you may have guessed if you’re as old as I am) a Gateway 2000 computer. I was over the moon with that thing. I spent many nights staring … Continue reading Hey, yinz!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11926,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/revels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/revels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/revels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/revels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11926"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/revels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/revels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/revels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions\/9"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/revels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/revels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/revels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}