About Me

My name is Chrispian and I have to thank my parents for the forward thinking that ensured the .com would be available to me when the time came. I’m a self employed web developer and have been working in the computer / internet field for almost 14 years now.

I started in computers when a good friend of mine introduced me to a local BBS. This was in 1992. He showed me how you could log on to some computer, leave a message and come back later and another real human being could leave replies. Then he showed me I could play turn based games against other people and even showed me how to log on to a MUD. My birth certificate says July 4, 1973. But I was reborn in the summer of 1992 when I logged on for the first time. Three months later I was running my own BBS and building/upgrading my own computers. At 19 years old $85/hour labor for computer repairs were out of my reach. I only paid $300 for the computer! And so the geek was born.

It wasn’t long before I went to work at the local PC shop where I learned how to fix anything that even remotely resembled a computer. From basic PC repairs to fixing larger computer systems (big Telco main frames) and computer networks of all sizes and my first forray into linux/unix. In 1994 the web was born and I was in love. I started building web sites almost immediatly. First for myself using my ISPs web space as hosting. Eventually I bought my first domain in 1997 (Lit.Org). I had created a web site using my ISP called the Altar of Ink a budding site for writers that I later moved to Lit.Org. I started creating a few web sites for friends, family and eventually started getting paid to do it part time.

Loving the creativity of the web I left PC repair behind and went on to help build a local ISP. I was the first employee hired and I had no idea how to even get started. After a few months of research I had a plan in place and got my friend Gary hired to come on board to sysadmin for us. We built the ISP up using Sun systems running Solaris and 3 T1 lines. It was so much fun. Once the business got going we hired staff to do all the jobs an ISP needed and I headed up the web dev department. I was later offered a job at the biggest ISP in the area as a developer/designer, which is where my real passion was. At both ISPs I worked on so many other people’s web sites that I thought my head would pop. I spent around 4-5 years in what we like to call “web design sweat shop” style of work where your job is to just crank out sites. At this time I was running a couple of growing community sites and I wanted the chance to see a web site beyond building it. I’d seen to many sites come and go and I wanted to stick with a project, to make it grow and to build it into something great.

That’s when I went to work for a local web publisher who has some pretty high profile domains. It was a great opportunity to manage a site from the other side of the process. Instead of handing over a completed design to a customer and rarely seeing the project again I got to work on the same project for two years and I learned so much during that process. Before I want to work there I was in the process of building my next big personal project - a blog network. The idea seems common now, but if I had launched it when I had planned I would have been the 3rd or 4th blog network around. This was when Weblogs Inc. and Gawker was the only real game in town. Who knows, I might have been invited to join one of the networks that have become popular since or maybe I would have become that network. But the life throws you a few curve balls. My step mom was diagnosed with Leukemia and a few months later my wife was diagnosed with Cervical Cancer. A few months after my wifes treatments I started getting sick myself. Thankfully they are both in remission and everyone is currently healthy but it set my plans of publishing a blog network behind several years. But I eventually did it.

I left the local publisher to start 451 Press with Steve, a friend I met at the same job. Shortly after we got started we also hired Miss Zoot another local blogger and together we created something really great, if you ask me. The community of bloggers that we had was nothing short of amazing. I truly love what we did there and the friends I made. I’m also very proud of the technical work I did there, creating all the custom code that became the foundation of the network, which is somewhere around 350-400 Wordpress blogs when I left a few months ago.

My goal has always been to be my own boss. Right now I’m a freelance developer / consultant and I love the clients I work with but the goal is to be a full time web publisher, my own sites bringing the income I need to be truly “self employed” and not just a hired gun. I’m hoping it would be too long before that dream is a reality.

My areas of interest / expertise are in php, mysql, linux, apache, squid, Wordpress, Nucleus, VB, phpBB, perl, APIs, writing, Photoshop, shell scripting and on an on. I very much dislike windows hosting and won’t touch it with a 10 foot pole. But I’m not so naive to think my way is the only way. There’s a right tool for every job, not one tool for every job. I’m not a standards evangalist, but I do like standards. Mainly, I like to get things done. I love being productive and seeing my projects completed and moving on to chase the next one. We, as people, are never as happy as when we are chasing a dream or challenge.