apocryph.org Notes to my future self

About Me

Basic Information

My name is (obviously) ANelson. I live in Northern Virginia, USA. I am a software developer by trade; currently I am the dev lead at AppAssure Software, a startup building cool new backup/recovery technology. Previously I was a senior consultant at BearingPoint, where I developed solutions for US government clients, primarily with .NET and Oracle. Prior to that, I developed cryptographic software for highly constrained embedded systems, and before that I built a secure wireless application development platform, as well as a number of e-commerce web applications. I don’t like to admit it, but I even built a (cough) B2B exchange (cough) at one point.

Contact Information

I’m on Skype as anelson. For Google Talk and email, use anelson AT apocryph org. My Facebook profile is here

Resume

Look at my resume here

Background Information

I was born in the early 80s, in Colorado, USA. I grew up in the mid-western United States until I was about 13, when my family moved to Maryland, USA.

I was home-schooled during most of my youth, due to my parents’ (and my) disdain for the utterly disfunctional system of public (and private) education. As a result of my home-schooling, I became an auto-didact at an early age, devoting myself full-time to the study of computer programming when I was 14. Upon discovering the Internet in 1995, I re-dedicated myself to the study of computer programming, and roaming the ‘Net for filez.

I began my professional career at 15, working as a user support technician at the National Institutes of Health. That rapidly segued into a web application development position, also at NIH, and from there I’ve not looked back. I’ve dabbled with college, but found the siren’s call of professional software development too difficult to resist.

Professional Information

As stated above, I began my professional career at 15. After leaving NIH, I ran my own one-man consulting shop for a while, working on web applications and large database projects. In the Fall of 2000, I joined a startup (name withheld) in Miami, Florida, USA, developing a B2B web exchange. The business model carried us for four months; in December of 2000, I returned home to Maryland, USA.

Upon returning home, I joined Altarus Corporation, a startup in northern Virginia, USA, building a secure wireless application development platform. I rapidly became Chief Engineer there, and ran a team of three solid developers building our product on an aggressive schedule. Sadly, our sales team was not nearly as elite, and the company imploded messily, with my reward consisting of a number of knives in the back.

Disillusioned, my Senior Programmer and I formed Cryptos Mobile Systems, LLC to build and market secure network connectivity tools for highly constrained embedded systems, such as the 8-bit Atmel AVR, and the 16-bit TI MSP430. While also supporting more traditional Pocket PC and desktop Windows platforms, our focus is on the emerging “extended Internet”, wherein countless small, highly constrained devices have intermittent, single-purpose network connectivity, and yet lack the security the rest of the Internet has come to rely upon.

Upon running out of cash, we got real jobs; I at BearingPoint as mentioned above. Doing contract software development for a big corporation with US government clients was definitely not my preferred activity, but it was an educational experience, and I got to travel to Toronto, Rome, and London (not to mention Iraq) on business, so it wasn’t all TPS reports and PC LOAD LETTER.

After becoming disillusioned with BearingPoint (largely as a result of my removal from the Iraq project; it’s a long story) I signed on with AppAssure, which being a startup is much more suited to my temperment. I hack all kinds of code there, from kernel-mode C (ok, mostly I just cringe at that stuff, and leave the hacking to others), to C++, through C#. You can read all about it at our web site.

Personal Information

I am single, and I live with two roomates.

I have a cat, Poke, to whom I am very attached.

Apart from an insatiable passion for technology, I enjoy (to the extent possible, which is minimal) working out, and reflecting upon how different America might be if various inconvenient bits of the Constitution had not been deprecated over the course of the 20th century. I have an avid interest in economics, policy, and law, the latter particularly as it relates to Constitutional issues.

Politically, I am a somewhat libertarian conservative, with a firm committment to free markets, limited government, individual liberty coupled with responsibility, and of course the right to keep and bear arms. I own a Kahr Arms PM9, a Glock 19, a Winchester 1300 Defender, a Mossberg 500, and an untold number of other weapons, all of which I exercise often (but not nearly often enough!) at the NRA Headquarters range in Fairfax, VA.

My religious affiliation is to Catholicism, not so much the feel-good social justice swill of the modern laiety, but orthodox Catholicism epitomized by The New Oxford Review.

Netflix

I like used to like Netflix. Alot. Then I discovered bittorrents. Sorry, MPAA; your shit just isn’t worth much more than free.

Music

My taste in music is a moving target, but includes some trip-hop/chillout, electronic, techno, alt-rock, and even a few tracks one might encounter on an ‘moods’ compilation. My last.fm profile has more.

Stack Overflow

I’m known to frequent StackOverflow: