SLP

Welcome!

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If you're reading this then you are either someone I have recently spoken to about a job, you are lost, or maybe you found a wormhole in the internet. Why do I say that? Because although I don't discourage search engines from crawling my site, I certainly have not optimized my site to be found very easily. I know. That's weird right? Well, it's because I am REALLY busy with a full-time job, family commitments and other side projects. So, if by some miracle you found me while researching web developers in Spokane Washington and you'd like to talk more then by all means give me a holler and let's see what we can work out!

Here's me in a nutshell...

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First and foremost I am a husband of 25 years and the proud father of an amazing 23-year old daughter, and I'm glad I listened to all of the people that told me to enjoy them when they are young! It really is amazing how fast they grow up!

• I used to play drums in a rock band!
• I love to cook, especially BBQ and campfire meals.
• If I could spend the entire summer camping AND I had an internet connection I would be as happy as if I was normal.
• I am a hard worker and was lucky enough to have a mother that taught me some"Old School" work ethics like
  • "On time is 15 minutes early"
  • "No matter what, always be professional, respectful, determined, but above all be humble and always to maintain a sense of humor about yourself."
  • "If you're not 100% happy with it (regardless of what it is) it's likely no one else will be either"

Technically Speaking...

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By today's standards I got my start in technology pretty late in life, but I will never forget it. It was 1999 and the internet had really only been around for about 4 years. My wife and I had just been married and returned from a whirl-wind honeymoon in Europe. We had bought a house before leaving for our honeymoon and closed on it the day after we returned. Also prior to leaving we had purchased a brand new Compaq desktop and 15" monitor, which was set up in the corner of the dining room at the time. I don't remember exactly what prompted it, but I do remember that one evening I was inspired to learn something about web design so I fired up Netscape (Google didn't exist then) and started looking for tutorials and it wasn't long before I was writing my first"Hello World" web page. I didn't have a server then so I was only able to preview it as an HTML document, but I will never forget the feeling I had when I realized that with a little time and patience I could learn something that would allow me to share anything I wanted with anyone in the world!

25 years ago I would've never imagined that I would have a Bachelor's degree of Information Technology and be proficient in web design & development, as well as just about anything you can imagine relating to ecommerce. Additionally, I am excellent with the MS Office products, especially Excel. I love making it do things it wasn't designed to do. By 2005 I had started my own web design company, collected a handful of clients and quickly realized that in order to make any money at it I was going to need to have a bigger staff of developers, graphic artists and the like. That thought left a bitter taste in my mouth because at that point my daughter was 4 and I didn't really think it was a good idea to get us in a huge financial commitment so I continued bringing in"Beer Money" for the next year until my daughter started kindergarten. In 2006 I got a job with Huppin's/OneCall as their Web Content Associate and by 2014 had advanced to be the Front-end Developer/Web Content Manager. During the last 2-1/2 years at OneCall I transitioned them from a"home-grown" .NET site to Magento with the intention of automating myself out of a job. I was pretty burned out and ready for something new. As luck would have it, about 2 months before I was going to resign I was recruited by Zak Designs as the Ecommerce Systems Administrator and have been there for 9 years.

If you're more of a bullet point person, here's a high level look at my skills and notable character traits:

• Proficient with Adobe Creative Cloud (Dreamweaver, Photoshop & Illustrator).
• Programming Languages: PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS & jQuery.
• Skilled at MS Office, with an advanced knowledge of Excel.
• 19 years hands-on experience in all aspects of web design, web development & ecommerce.
• Competent with Magento, WordPress, 3D Cart & Joomla.
• Although I prefer not to manage I have managed 4 - 40 people, and been told I'm pretty good at it.
• I'm determined, sometimes I think to a fault because I refuse to admit defeat.
• I'm a fast thinker, fast learner and solution driven.

If any of this sounds like it's a good fit to what you have in mind please feel free to give me a call, or drop me a line!