Short version:

* Self-taught programmer in VB 3.0

* Computer science degree focused on Adobe Flash, Fireworks, and Java from vocational school in high school

* Worked in security

* Psychology degree

* Teaching English

* Visual Basic 6.0

* Flash and Databases

* HTML/CSS/Javascript/PHP/WordPress/Joomla/Drupal/etc.

Long version:

Self-taught programmer at 12. Mostly personal for AOL making stupid proggies. VB 3.0 was the first thing I ever used. Studied computer science in school where I learned Adobe Flash and Fireworks, and VBScript and Java. I quit programming cold turkey at at 18. I quit gaming cold turkey at 22. Miss it everyday but I develop web apps instead which lets me be as creative as I want.

I went to college for psychology. Worked mostly in security to pay the bills and on company dime after they gave me a penny raise, so I had them pay me to educate myself. But I wanted absolutely nothing to do with computers anymore. I'd only deal with people. Wasn't sure exactly til I realized I definitely loved social psychology and industrial-organizational psychology, so somewhere between career counseling and making companies more pleasant. Graduated with a psych degree.

While in that other country, I was volunteering for an organization and they had a crappy website that they'd been working on for the past two years. Nothing was done to it. I figured I'd try it out. Mind you, I hadn't touched any code since 18. But once I did, I really enjoyed it. They loved their new website and I got my first professional experience.

The program was great, but it was volunteer meaning my room and board and some food was covered, but my bank account was not replenishing, and I just barely had enough to move back home to my mom. With student loans calling... Applying across the boards of Craigslist and a long story short... after a year and a half of fixing bugs and adding new features into a now-obsolete business, I learned everything I could from my tyrant boss, who did pave the way for my understanding how to write applications the proper way in order to start businesses and things like that. Glad I paid attention. Wish he did when I asked for a raise.

I had been applying for months across the board for jobs and applied to this one job that I thought was a scam. "Work from Home" Yeah. Right. They sent a W4 and wanted a social security number. We fell for it. And it was real. At the same time all this was happening, I had gotten an interview for another job at the same time and got that job. Literally, I'm on the phone for one interview to get a job, and the other job calls.

So I hand the phone to my girlfriend who went through the interview process for me, pretending to be me basically... pretty much had the same skillset I had, and she didn't even say who she was... and she got the job. At the end, she told the interviewer her name and that it wasn't me. This was over a decade ago, so I'm pretty sure they verify who you are now. At the time, it was a phone interview.

I was upset and told her to still mention that I was interested in the job which she did. About two weeks later, I get a call saying they had interviewed like 10 people and wanted to interview me, as none of them were meeting qualifications, and I got the job. I worked both jobs for about two years for 16 hour days while freelancing on the side and weekends before getting laid off by the first job, which gave me flash and database experience. My days were pretty much 8 AM to 2 AM and freelance work in between. I'd sleep about 2 or 3 hours and weekends. Paid off $40k student loans in about 2 1/2 years! Uncle Sam, of course... wanted a big piece of the pie, so $5k came due as a reminder that I had just entered the real world of taxes.

Got hired to work for the media doing web design where I still am, working mostly HTML and designing CSS templates, and coding with Javascript at times. I also started my own business but prefer to stick with good ol' fashion PHP and MySQL and Javascript for my web apps. While I know the language demands out there, I just got tired of keeping up with the Kardashians and catering to every company's whim out there. Definitely pays the bills and if I'm desperate, I'll hop to it.

Here's to another 30 years of being in our industry!