Where I come from

I was born on September 13, 1985 in Lancing, Tennessee which is where I have resided my entire life. The mountains and rivers make it an absolutely beautiful place to live.

Educational Background

I attended high school at Wartburg Central High. During the years that I was there I took many courses which have helped me significantly. I am extremely pleased that the high school I went to offered many technologically advanced courses, especially the web design courses.

In December of 2002 I had completed enough courses to finish high school early. I even completed on the dual path which means I took the required courses for college and technical paths. In January of 2003 I started at the Tennessee Technology Center at Harriman (TTCH) in the Information Technology program that was just getting started, the classroom wasn’t even ready. The two students already in the program and I were able to assist in the configuration of the computers that would be purchased for the program, set up of the classroom and conference room (put desks together, ran electrical wiring, made ethernet cables, ran ethernet cabling, etc). Once the computers arrived we unboxed them, set them up and configured them for use on the TTCH computer network.

The IT program at TTCH followed the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) study track with different certification points. While at TTCH, I studied for and took 4 certification exams and received all of them, one of which is just an update to a prior exam. I received the CIW Associate, CIW Professional and CIW Master Site Designer certifications. When I graduated I received a diploma from TTCH with the title of Master Site Designer.

Web Design

Ever since I got my first computer I have been playing around with websites. I hate to admit it, but I even made a few web pages with Microsoft Word! Don’t worry, I use more appropriate software now and am able to hand code my websites.

I have always loved web design. I love to take my eye for design and turn it into a website. I love to take my organizational skills and integrate organization into a website. Sometimes my websites are too organized! I suppose that’s because I am a Virgo. Everytime I design a website I strive to keep it simple, clean, organized, accessible and of course, elegant.

Blogging

I started blogging in September of 2005. Since then I have been blogging about a wide range of topics ranging from free software, commercial software, web design, photography, cooking, politics and personal entries.

When I started blogging, I started on the Opera Community. At the time, I didn’t have a real web hosting account where I could host my own blog. A few months after I started on the Opera community I started wanting more features and the ability to customize the look and feel of my blog to my own liking, I purchased hosting on GoDaddy and installed Nucleus CMS and continued blogging from my own domain. I started setting up different blogs for each topic that I wanted to discuss. All the blogs became difficult to manage so I decided to roll them all into one large blog and also at the same time get away from Nucleus and into WordPress which I am still using for my blogs.

Today, I still have several blogs. I have the Tech Butter blog. I also am the host of the Fat Track Blog which is where my friends and I talk about weight loss. I have another personal blog but I’ll get to that one in the next section.

Podcasting

The first podcast that I started was “The Weekly Tech Review.” I started it in November of 2005. It was a show that I tried to do every single week about what was happening in the technology world and my opinion about it. I regret the fact that I had “Weekly” in the title because it was rather difficult for me to get one out every single week. As time went on I got worn out and tired of doing it. I came to find out that when I was addressing an audience about technology, I preferred to write about it. I ended the podcast in June of 2006.

A month or so after I had started “The Weekly Tech Review” I was asked to co-host a show with Nathan Tia from “The UFN Show” (UFN = Urban Family Night). The show was called “Melton Mondays.” On that show we discussed gadgets, software and anything else related to technology that we could find to talk about. Unfortunately, the show came to an end only after a few episodes when the “UFN Show” decided to end their podcast.

In December of 2005 I started another site called “Andy’s Audio & Video Journal.” On this website I would post audio and video about things that were happening in my life. In March of 2007 I decided that I would start fresh with a new site called “Andy Not Andrew.” I decided to start fresh because a lot of the posts on “Andy’s Audio & Video Journal” were being password protected and I decided that it was time to come out of my shell and start speaking my mind publicly.

Digital Photography

One of my absolute favorite things to do is to grab the camera and go walking. I love to take pictures, of everything! Thankfully, digital photography has allowed me the ability to do this. If it weren’t for digital photography I would not be taking as many photos and would not be able to work on my photography skills due to the costs of traditional film photography. I love being able to capture a moment in time and hold onto it forever.

I have taken many photos that I would consider to be my favorites and if you’d like to see them you can click on the Photos link above and view them on Flickr.