Personal Portal

Ok....lets start from the top. I was born on March 21, 1980. Little did Sally or Louis know what they had gotten themselves into. Two and a half years later, they tried again. Who can blame them; if you had me as your first attempt, wouldn't you feel the need to try again? The result was much more satisfactory and Laura was born on July 28, 1982. I grew up in a rather pleasant split-level home in Lilburn, Ga, which wasn't so pleasant 15 or so years later. We then moved to a much nicer location on the other side of Lilburn. For most of my childhood, I had two pastimes: getting into trouble and getting out of trouble. I was infinitely more successful at the first.

Skipping a few years, I went to Parkview High School. The only true accomplishment that I managed to walk out of there with, was my three years of debate experience. Although I never competed on the traveling team, I was very active for the three years that I attended the school. Although this was definitely the start of something....well, we shall get to there eventually. With my upcoming senior year at high school in the horizon, I decided to go ahead and get a jump start on life. I enrolled in the "Go to college a year early" program and proceeded on to Georgia State University.

At GSU, I continued my education and also got a scholarship for participation in their collegiate debate program. I traveled a bit around the country and was mildly successful. I didn't have a whole lot of direction and tossed quite a few majors around. I played with poli-science, pre-law, a few others, but finally stayed with communications with a concentration in public speaking. At the time, my goal was to follow in the footsteps of my mother and eventually become a lawyer. As most children have, there seems to be a predisposition to follow the career paths of their parents. My father was a successful electronic engineer and he specialized in chip and hardware design. Although I have always been interested and involved with computers, frankly I thought what he did was incredibly boring. It wasn't until the boom in information technology careers that I realized there more to a computer job than CAD. Since I didn't follow my father, my mother seemed the most logical path.

If there was one thing that I learned in college, its that I found out there was no way that I could do seven years of college to become a lawyer. It wasn't the education that I didn't like, it was the structured system behind getting that education. It always seemed like learning was not even a byproduct of the whole process. Now, it seemed, I needed a new direction. Since high school, I had maintained my financial situation by working at a grocery store. It paid the bills, but was in no way a solid career. One day, I kind of happened into a new path.

One day, my girlfriend's mother asks me to come help her with a few computer tasks at the school that she works at. She knew that I was fairly proficient at computers and she just needed some help installing software and whatnot. After helping her, she realized that I was much more knowledgeable than she had originally assumed. She asked if I could come help her more often. I started doing it on a weekly basis. Through her, I met several people and they all seemed impressed by my abilities. Several different schools were interested in my help. I then met the technology supervisor for the school system.

We then talked about the possibility of me working directly for him to support the entire network. Although their budgeting process would not allow for a direct hiring, they had a fund that they could use for contract work. This was the beginning of Friedman Consulting. I would charge them an hourly rate and they paid me as they needed me. I was so happy to finally be doing something with my life that I enjoyed. Friedman Consulting took up so much of my time, that I was able to quit my job at the store and dedicate all of my time to my business. I also had some small contracts with other independent clients for their small business needs. All was well until a life changing event happened.

The tragedy of the World Trade centers would change my life. I caught the breaking news as I awoke and couldn't break myself away from the news all day. I found myself blaming everyone and everything that I could think of. This brought on a very serious self-realization. What had I done to help? Although I had worked some volunteer work with a few small political campaigns while in college, I had not really fulfilled my civic duties to my country. Within the week, I had talked to an Army recruiter and signed my life away to the military.

I did basic training at Fort Benning and then on to Fort Gordon for my AIT (Advanced Individual Training). I went back to Fort Benning for airborne school and then found myself at Fort Hood in Texas. I was assigned to Alpha Company 16th Signal Battalion and have spent my entire military career with this unit. I am currently on my second deployment to Iraq. Although my MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) is 25Q, which is a radio transmission operator, my previous qualifications caused me to be placed in the spot of a 25F, which is a network switching operator.

After leaving the military honorably during the begining of 2006, I found a great job with a small company called Spider Strategies where I currently reside as the Manager of Training and Implementation as well as heading up the Quality Assurance department. I moved to Atlanta for a while, but right now, I am in the process of moving back to Austin. Brooke and I have picked out a house lot and building will begin soon. The house should be completed in very early 2008. We are also finishing up wedding plans and we will make it official on October 14th 2007.