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Who am I?

I am Stetson. This site is me figuring out how hack make websites I enjoy visiting. Writing seems to help my mind envelop concepts, so I'm writing to figure stuff out.

My history of learning to program is scattered and long. I started with Ruby, but didn't get far, maybe 2 weeks far. Then I dabbled with Wordpress/PHP, but didn't stick with it. Then plain old HTML and CSS which I learned well enough to build a few sites.

In 2018 I did a coding bootcamp focused on the MERN stack (not nearly as cool sounding as the MEAN stack in my opinion) and that was my first journey into Javascript.

Between programming stints I started two compaines. Great Plains Painting & Tis the Season Holiday Lighting. In 2019 I sold my painting company and 2020 was the year I got serious about learning Javascript and doing something with it.

What I'll Write About Here

Learning to code continually challenges me. There is an overwhelming amount of information on the internet and I find most of it is opinionated or biased in some way. Simply parsing the information and finding what is useful to me takes time and effort.

My objective is to build simple websites which are screaming fast and low overhead on developer setup and maintenance. For me, simplicity is king.

I wish that pro coders and hackers showed me how to use their tools, like personally held my hand and showed me, but with a few exceptions most do not. So I'm going to approach my writing about these tools in that way. I'll write about my personal setup and implementation starting with the bare bones setups and layering on abstraction along the way.

Note: I'm going to be wrong a lot. I know slightly more than nothing and am far from an expert. If anyone even reads about me struggling through figuring things out, I hope you find it helpful.

A Brief History of Me and How I Got Here

  • 1986: Born in Newcastle, Wyoming. Oldest of 3.
  • 1997: My family moves to Cheyenne, Wyoming. My dad is a pilot and takes a job in Cheyenne and gets to fly Jets 🛩. Cheyenne is the big city in Wyoming, though almost ANYWHERE else, it is not.
  • 2003: My mother encourages me to take a few classes at the community college. I agree.
  • 2003 - 2005: I like math and it makes sense to me. The professor teaching Calculus is the head engineering professor and encourages me to major in engineering. I graduate with an associates in Math and an associates in Engineering and transfer to the University of Wyoming.
  • 2005-2009: I study Civil Engineering, graduate with my B.S., and hang around for an extra year and get a Master's Degree in Geotechnical Engineering.
  • 2009: Two companies offer me positions. One is an oil services company. The job is to work on the off-shore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. It sounds like they own you and your time, but they pay really well. The other job is from a large contractor working for their group who builds only power projects (power plants) and their headquarters is in Kansas City. I go for power plants and Kansas City.
  • 2010: I get moved to Morristown, TN to work on my first live project. I work ALOT, and mostly night shift, and begin to think perhaps I don't want to go this route long term.
  • 2011: I request to move to Long Beach, CA to work on a new power project there. My request is granted.
  • 2011-2012: A consulting company in LA hires me. I decide to try the engineering side instead of the construction side of things. I end up working mostly with the same contractor, but with their transportation group on large bridge projects. Still working a fair amount of night shift, and still traveling and working ALOT.
  • 2012-2015: A friend opens a gym in Sioux Falls, SD and asks me to come work for him and help him build it up. I do, and learn how to build a business, market, sell, lead, and get in really good shape.
  • 2015-2017: I decide I need to start my own business. Without much consideration or strategy, I move back to Kansas City and start a house painting company. The internet and books and podcasts warned me it would be hard, but starting a business is the hardest thing I've ever done. It gets a little easier after about 3 years.
  • 2017-2019: The guy I hired as a project manager for the painting company pitches me on starting a holiday lighting company. I push him off for a while, but we do in 2017. Holiday lighting turns out to be a great little business and we have a lot of fun doing it. It was much easier for us to get going than the painting company.
  • 2018 / 2019: I'm tired of not being able to get the results I want in a website, and decide I need to learn how to code sites myself. I take a coding bootcamp and learn enough to build our holiday lighting business website myself. It goes great, ranks #1 on google search, and brings in a ton of leads during our busy season. I sell my painting company to my (now friend) PM and move to CA. I return to Kansas City September to January to run our holiday light season.
  • 2020: COVID hits, and I decide it's the perfect time for me to learn Javascript and get serious about building websites.

Blogs that have influenced me

I don't know any of these people personally (but if one of you finds yourself here, CALL ME!....err....message me). I give them props because I think they have great ideas and communicate them well. If I say anything intelligent, it's probably because I learned it from them.