Welcome to Treetop's CHANGELOG!
Hello World!
That’s what I’m supposed to say here right? My first real attempt at a home on the web. Not including that slice of static masterpiece on the back pages of www.auburn.edu in the late nineties known as Bert’s Chili. It was a fine product. Probably a member of several quality webrings. Who could remember?
But now I’m back. Twenty-odd years gone. I did spend some time working for the Division of University Computing through the co-op program. I got to watch the tech bubble bust as I was failing Differential Equations. I changed majors twice before I dropped out. I never had a real idea of why I was at college. It wasn’t the coursework that washed me out, although I did bounce off of Physics pretty hard. Calculus is bad enough without making it into a word problem. Computer Engineering was a pretty bold choice for me. Based on my early intro to BASIC with the C64 my uncle gave us, and some idea that it was a surefire paycheck… Either way, my heart wasn’t in it. Nor my head.
The real culprit in my failed college education was my job. Or more precisely, jobs. I took on some loans to pay my way. Nothing in the ballpark of today’s costs, but it wasn’t enough to cover everything. There were no scholarships to help. Until my senior year, I went to an arts high school and was more about arias than Ada. Something shifted. I still couldn’t say what. Maybe it was practical. There are not a ton of prospects for a classically trained tubist. Maybe I was never as into it as I thought I was. Hell. Maybe it was a girl. Who could say? It was like ninety years ago.
Anywho. I had to work. And work I did.
At one point I held down jobs in the chemistry department, the school library, and a popular sandwich franchise. Sprinkled in were short stints roofing, as a plumber’s assistant, and at a local steakhouse. At some point, the work, and admittedly the play, took over too much of my time and my grades tanked. I was an English major at this point, with a focus on technical writing, and again, I just wasn’t fully committed. I decided to take a break. And as happens to many people, I never went back.
I moved back home and took a decent job driving trucks and doing general warehouse work for a plumbing supply house. It paid some bills and kept me busy but eventually started looking for a second job. I was addicted. It took quite a few years before I would keep just one job at a time. I got on with a local pizza place in a hip little neighborhood and eventually gave up the warehouse job. Twenty years later I’ve worked just about every position in the service industry. I’ve been a mediocre barista, a damn fine baker, and an efficient, if not always pleasant, server. I’ve tended bar, bar backed, and worked the door. Short of opening my own restaurant I’ve tried it all, but the kitchen is where I found my place. I’ve started in more than one dish room but never stayed there long. Most of my stops wound up in management at some level. I know people at just about every major food vendor in the southeast. I’ve been involved in marketing (before and after social media). I’ve designed menus and developed recipes from weekly specials to permanent menu items. I’ve redesigned, remodeled, and revamped kitchens. I worked myself into a position to continue my career in just about any kitchen I wanted to work at, and in 2019 I decided to walk away from it all.
I won’t pretend that my body wasn’t feeling the effects of a quarter century on concrete floors. The physical tolls of the restaurant industry can be very real. Industry people work hard and play harder. Closing down a kitchen at midnight makes it a pretty easy choice to go close down the bar next door. Hell, my future wife was tending one of those bars. As my thirties wore on the work began to get more demanding and less rewarding. Working in a smaller market had left me little room for advancement, and having started a family, I had no real desire to relocate. My darling wife took a job with the state and went back to school. She had made a change that I was starting to envy, but it wasn’t the only change we were going to make.
Yada yada yada… Now we have twin boys. I’ve been staying home with the handsome little devils since the beginning of 2020 and I think my time in the restaurant industry is done. I’ve got my sights on a new career in web development and I’m here to talk about that process and “learn in public”, as they say. So stay tuned for thoughts on what I’m learning, what I’m seeing in the world of technology, and maybe a few fishing stories.