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You should hire James!
Congratulations -- if you're reading this, you've decided to consider hiring James! This is a positive move that underscores your obvious intelligence.Unique background
My undergraduate degree from Emory University is in English and Film Studies, with a minor in computer science. I earned my MS in computer science from Georgia Tech in 2001. This is an unusual combination; I think you would be hard-pressed to find a software developer who can write and communicate as well as I can. I also consider myself exceptional at taking scientifically complex ideas and making them comprehensible to a layperson.My life with computers
Computers have been a big part of my life since early childhood. At age 8 I attended a summer computer program and got my first taste of programming (in BASIC on the Apple IIe). Throughout my school-age years I would program my own BASIC games on my family's Kaypro I. At Emory, I had my first exposure to the Internet, and my introduction to programming in C on UNIX systems. I began teaching myself HTML in 1995. I also worked on the university's newspaper, the Emory Wheel, first as a sports reporter, then sports editor, and eventually, managing editor, which put me in charge of all the newspaper's computer systems and its production cycle. As Wheel managing editor, working on deadline taught me the importance of speed and accuracy in computing. I taught myself to be as quick and accurate as possible when using our publishing software (QuarkXPress and Photoshop). I also oversaw the initial transition to digital production (moving away from pasting up pages by hand), which improved the accuracy of color separation and sped up production. My first job out of college was designing pages and running production for a small daily newspaper just south of Atlanta, which required an in-depth knowledge of QuarkXPress and Photoshop.
In 1999 I enrolled in graduate school at Georgia
Tech to pursue a career in computer science. This greatly expanded my expertise in a number of fields,
including databases, operating systems,
user interfaces, graphics, and security.
My favorite project was a short video that featured a video filter created from
scratch, as part of a class in Digital
Video Special Effects. The resulting video, Dirty Harry Potter, was a hit with the class
and even won a video contest at 2000's DragonCon in Atlanta.
(Download it - 55M Quicktime)
In the first half of 2001 I worked as a technical writer in Atlanta for AppForge, Inc. Besides writing user manuals and API documentation, I also created two games using their Palm OS virtual machine (download here and here). In August 2001 I moved to Arlington, Va. and took a job with Planning Systems Incorporated as a software engineer, where for the next four years I worked on air traffic control prototype software as a project for the FAA. During this time I also worked on submarine audio signal processing software on a project for the US Navy. All work done for both projects was in C/C++ on Unix or Linux systems. In 2005 I moved to Seattle and accepted a job with Microsoft. During 2005 I worked for the Windows group, testing volume licensing and virtual machine detection. In 2006 I moved to the Windows Mobile Device Management and Security team, where I tested the SoftwareDisable Configuration Service Provider and the Configuration Manager. During this time I helped ship Windows Vista, and Windows Mobile 6.1 and 7.
Fun side projects
One of my favorite software side projects has been Touchdown Fever, a pinball game I created from scratch in Randy Davis' Visual Pinball. (Download it here.)I've done freelance web development work for The Birchwood Club in Highland Park, Ill., whose website I created from scratch. I also created a website at furdell.com for my family to use. The site uses Movable Type blog software, and includes a self-updating calendar and weather report.