I have been a computer geek ever since junior year of high school, when a friend convinced me to install Gentoo Linux (from source!) on my laptop; however, I took an indirect route to becoming a software developer and consultant: I attended college with plans to be a financial analyst but graduated at the height of the Great Recession. I landed a job doing telephone customer support – and hated it. I found respite in any technical task I could get assigned to me. I learned a bit of Python for scripting and some PHP 6 for web development – but it was enough to kickstart me into a career I love, as a self-taught code craftsperson and professional problem solver. I’ve found my passion for simple and elegant solutions to difficult problems.At the same time, I haven’t forgotten the most important lesson I learned doing customer support: that there are people behind both sides of the screen. Every person has their own unique needs and priorities: we must write code ethically, with understanding and empathy for both the end-users and the product-owners.Current Preferred Development Stack: PHP, MySQL/MariaDB, Redis, Laravel, Vue.js, Tailwind, Laravel Forge, GitHub, Git, Docker, Ubuntu, PhpStorm, Sublime, Vim, and a lo-fi chill-hop stream.