About Me

I’ve been writing software since I figured out how to hack Lemonade Stand back in the late 1970’s (ok, writing is a bit of a stretch). I absolutely adored my Commodore 64. Man, those power bricks just didn’t last!

My interest in computers never waned. I moved on from my C64, to my parents C128 (dual disk drives! woot!), to a 286, 386, 486, Pentium, and so on. After a short stint in the military, I moved to Colorado Springs to go to school.

I graduated from UCCS in the spring of 1999 with a Bachelors of Electrical Engineering. I really thought I wanted to be an analog designer. That dream was short lived! I soon realized that what truly made me happy was programming. With that knowledge in hand, I went back to school.

I graduated from CTU in the spring of 2005 with a Masters of Science in Software Engineering. I finally had the piece of paper that proved I could write code. I left my semiconductor job for a much-more-software-focused job in electrical test equipment (logic analyzers, to be exact). That worked out great, until they laid me off (no worries, I enjoyed the 3 months severance).

Luckily, I was hired right away. I continue to work in the storage industry, but I’m happy to say I’m 100% software focused! I’ve been writing code to facilitate test automation since 2007 (mainly Python). I really enjoy the challenge and I love the instant feedback I get since my customers sit right next to me.

About The Name

The name mtik, pronouced “em tick”, was my very first EverQuest character (a Gnome Necromancer). I had played quite a bit of Ultima Online prior to the release of EverQuest, but I can’t remember any of my character names. I used mtik as a character name for all of the MMORPGs that followed. It stuck! I became quite fond of it. I added the 00 to the end due to a name-collision when I signed up for something or another.