I was the kid who always had to know how things worked. The one who spent a rainy Saturday taking apart and figuring out how to fix the family VCR. The one driven by a powerful analytical curiosity from a very early age.
My interest in computers and IT began to blossom in high school, yet through my college years, I would have considered myself little more than a dabbler. It was an intensive six month course through Alltels Client Server University that helped me realize what I wanted to do for a living, and propelled my career forward. Two months training in VB6 (fat client side), two months of C++ (server side), and six weeks of Java (thin client side) helped me see not only my own...