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updated 10/11/99
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My life, as I look back on it, wasn't very interesting
until I started high school in September, 1984 at Lane Tech. Those four years had their ups and
downs. In my freshman drafting class, I met Mike Olijnyk, who I still talk to
on a regular basis. I was involved in the Marching Band and will never
forget the time that we played the Superbowl homecoming parade in 1986 and got
all our instruments broken.
I wrote several songs
while attending Lane Tech, some of which I only wrote a chorus to, and some
that ended up complete works of art. They will be featured on the up-and-coming
release of the CD "Four Years at Lane Tech."
In September, 1988, I began my college
education at DePaul University. My fondest
memories of DePaul were when I became a DJ on their radio station, WRDP, which
was fun in spite of the fact that it didn't broadcast outside the University
dorms and cafeteria. I had a show called "Pop Muzik" which featured
the 1979 hit that went by the same name. Other favorite selections I played on
the show included:
In September, 1990, I transfered to University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign and
found the classes to be much more difficult than at DePaul. It took me an extra
semester to graduate, but I suppose it was good to give me a feel for what a
"big" university was like.
In January, 1992, I started working as a full-time computer programmer at National Systems. I did a lot of work
to streamline their information systems in the tech support department, but the
coolest project I got to work on was a voicemail and paging system, where I
learned all about Dialogic hardware. With
what I learned about voicemail programming, I hope to start some sort of
business that involves a voicemail system.
In 1997, I decided I wanted to get into Windows development, and my job
at the time didn't offer such an opportunity, so I began working at Applied Financial Management. Due to
corporate restructuring, however, I had to make another move.
I then began working at GlobalView Software
in October 1997 and had a good time learning about Windows and internet
development. I also took a few classes at Columbia
College to study audio recording, which has always interested me since I am
a very musical person.
In June of 1999, I decided that full-time software development wasn't for me,
since I had some ideas for projects of my own, and working full-time did not
allow me to have enough time and energy to do my own software development. So,
I left GlobalView and began my first project, the Net-By-Phone Voice Internet Service.
I began advertising the system when I finished the development in
February, 2000. I had commercials running for a week on WLS-AM, an ad in The Chicago Reader, and a co-op mailing
that a print shop in the neighborhood of my office sent out. I even sent an
email to the Kim Komando Show which got sent out by accident to all the
subscribers to her list! My ISP, web hosting provider, and several users sent
me nasty emails calling me a spammer!
However, I was unable to pay the bills with the few customers that came
out of my advertising efforts. So, I decided to do computer programming for
other companies once again, but this time, I began pursuing temporary contract
assignments.
In the following year, I had several contract positions, including some
projects for Deloitte & Touche and Diamond Technologies. I then had difficulty
finding work for some time and began to get discouraged with the contracting,
so I thought I'd try to find something permanent, but I wanted to find
something that would really spark my interest and that I would do well in. I
went on computerjobs.com and searched
for jobs related to Interactive Voice Response systems. Because of my business
ventures and previous experience in such systems, I thought I'd enjoy such a
job. I spent about three months waiting around for companies to contact me, but
I eventually got an offer from scribe.com
and promptly started a full-time job there in March, 2001.
On May 18th, 2001, scribe.com layed off most of its staff because they
could no longer afford the payroll. Fortunately, however, my business started
to take off because of some free advertising opportunities I stumbled on
through the Tellme system. I was also
getting "free plugs" through various blindness organizations such as
the ACB and the Guild For The Blind. By the end of
2001, Net-By-Phone had over 30 customers and there was enough money coming in
to support the office, phones, and other regular expenses.
Update, Jan. 12, 2003 Net-By-Phone now has 75 active customers.
One of my customers invited me to attend the local chapter meeting of the NFB, so I went there to plug my venture. More
about that meeting is on the events
page.
Hobbies & Interests
Over the years, I have pursued many personal interests. Currently, my favorite
places to hang out include:
Favorite stores
Favorite Links
·
Dancin' All
Night Long!(This is a song I wrote and can be found at this site)
·
I Want to
be with You, Tonight!(This is the other song featured on the site)
·
Music Music
Music(Free music on the web)
Favorite Food
Favorite music
Before the day I die, I would like to:
Updated:
1/24/01
