I currently have limited availability for contract work.
I have experience with HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Responsive Frameworks, NodeJS, PHP, Web Services, and REST / SOAP protocols.
I've integrated more APIs than I can count. A partial list includes: UPS, FedEx, PayPal (IPN, Express, WPP), Stripe, Authorize.net, MailChimp, Mandrill, Constant Contact, SiteLink, and various Amazon APIs.
I spent 7 years as the Senior Engineer for Dice Media. We worked on some pretty cool projects over the years!
If you know me, you know that I'm a jokster. I love to laugh and love to make other people laugh so hard they cry.
Because of this, I'm not the kind of person that gives sentimental holiday cards or shows a lot of affection in public.
But the truth is... I'm a hopeless romantic at heart.
When we got engaged, I told my wife I wanted something special for my wedding ring. I wasn't happy with the mass-produced rings most stores offered. I shopped on Etsy for a beautiful hand-crafted wedding ring and found quite a few that I liked... but none of them were truly "unique".
Six years earlier, when we started dating, our first date was at an old pool hall. That's when it struck me, "I'll have a ring made out of an 8-ball from that pool hall!"
I called the pool hall only to find out the place had closed years earlier. I tracked down the previous owner and he was nice enough to not only give me an 8-ball from the equipment he still had, but he drove over and dropped it off in person.
I overnighted the 8-ball to Johan Rust who turned it into an amazingly beautiful, titanium & rose gold, one of a kind, wedding ring.
The right photo is a "plant hook". I say "plant hook" in quotes because my wife appropriated it as her towel hook... and complains because it puts holes in her towels. Some day I'll have to make her a "towel hook".
Wood Working
My wife LOVES scrabble. I tried to find her a really nice board but none of them lived up to my expectations.
This isn't mine - it's the BigMow; it's $12k.
I'm hoping to build one for slightly less than that. It would be powered by an Arduino and use a Roomba-style bump-n-mow.
CNC Machine
This is not my machine - still building mine
DIY Pipe Light
This is what I plan to build for my workshop.
Giant Jenga
On this spring's todo list. Who wouldn't love this?
Over the last few years, I have had the privledge of working with my good friend Arny Pollack and the guys over at Dice Media on a number of interesting projects.
If you're looking for some great web design, give Dice Media a call!
My Own Little Story allows you to record the special moments in your child's life, even before they're born!
As the lead developer on this project, I got the chance to create some great features like a custom Book Builder that allows the owner to create new books with custom layouts and themes, "milestones" for users to fill out, and a variety of photo pages.
Once a user has filled out their story, they can order the book through the Custom E-Commerce system. After purchase, the owner submits the book for generation and the system spits out a 300 DPI print-ready PDF.
Because of the quantity of user images and the size of the books, we store data on Amazon S3 and use a NodeJS app on a high-memory instance on Amazon EC2 for the book generation.
This project started out as a single discount membership system that allowed users to purchase a membership book/card or activate a card they already had. The success of the project led to the owners franchising the business and the system was modified to create additonal franchise sites that run off the same core system. The multi-level user system allows the franchisees atonomy to populate the system while allowing the owners to oversee and administer when needed.
We also built a data API for a complimentary iOS app (developed by a 3rd party) that can load franchise data based on your location.
Jagwear has been one of my longest running projects (over a decade) and has gone through a plethora of iterations of it's suit builder.
The system allows customers to purchase pre-made suit designs or build their own from hundreds of suit designs and an even larger selection of fabrics. They can order suits for multiple gymnasts and we added a Team system for gymnastic clubs to save a roster of all their members and their measurements and gave them the ability to place bulk orders.
Elephant Heart Jewelery was the first Dice Media store to introduce a new shopping cart paradigm. With an emphasis on ease of use, the one-page checkout was a hit and became Dice Media's most-requested cart style.
LaLicious sells some of the best bath and body products I have my wife has ever used. They have been featured in hundreds of magazines, appeared in countless news stories and sell thousands of products around the world.
The LaLicious store was one of the first e-commerce systems I built. While I cringe when I look at some of the code I wrote back then, other than a few feature upgrades, the system has allowed LaLicious to grow from a startup company (I watched them make their first labels) to an international leader.
It was an honor and a privledge to be chosen to work on this site.
We performed a large amount of data conversion to turn the collection of disparate, hand-typed, recipient information into an indexed, searchable database. It was humbling to read about the acts of selflessness that these men and women performed. They are truly deserving of the real meaning of the word awesome.
One of the requirements for the project was to have an extremely simple system for maintaining the archive. We created a custom CMS that allows the maintainers to update information as simply as possible.
The site now serves as the resource for information on Medal of Honor recipients and maintains current records about both living and deceased members.
I created the CDBA website to help out my local blacksmithing association. Since the site went live, the attendance at monthly meetings has doubled and there are now over 150 members!
Elite is one of the more complex e-commerce clients we setup. Their system has over 15 modules that interconnect to provide features like limited-time product offers, products tied to available seminars and a members-only directory.
