While I feel most at home with my hands on a keyboard, what I am truly passionate about is far more exciting.  Snowboarding with nothing but powder beneath my feet, celebrating a victory with my lacrosse team after our rival game, playing guitar around a campfire on a warm summer night, spending the holidays with a family that truly knows love and compassion; these are the things I love, these are the things that have shaped and defined my life.  The following is a brief history about me.  Please keep in mind this is not a complete story, or the most exciting version, this is simply an extension of my resume, an explanation of how I got to where I am now.  So if you want to know me this is a good place to start, but this is only the tip of the iceberg.

In The Beginning – Birth & Childhood

This is always the boring part, the part you can’t remember because you were too young.  You relive these experiences through the stories told by your parents (they save the embarrassing ones for when you’re around a cute girl).  My story starts out in Ohio on March 28, 1988 at 12:08am.  As a child my family did a lot of traveling.  From the time I was born to the third grade we moved from Ohio, to Texas, to California, to Missouri, and finally to Chocolate Town USA, also known as Hershey, Pennsylvania.  Aside from that my childhood was average, exhilarating, but nothing to brag about.

The Middle Part – Discovering Talents

Those who only know my outgoing side are usually shocked to hear that I actually know my way around the geeky, nerdy world of technology.  It all started when I was 8 years old at the school book fair.  (Side Note: At the time my family had recently purchased a new computer with dial-up internet, which back then was a small fortune, and really cool.)  So I was never really a big fan of reading, but one paperback book in particular happened to catch my attention.  It was called How to Make a Website, and it changed the course of my life.  Halfway through the book I realized there were two important skills needed to “make a website”.  The first involved programming the website, at the time HTML with a little XML was all you needed.  The second involved designing the website, and coincidentally art always came natural to me.  During school I used art class as an escape, a place to create, a place to free my mind.  By the time I finished the book I was creating a website for anything and everything.  Whether it was an extreme sports site to show off my skateboarding pictures, or a website to promote my band during battle of the bands week, I put all my passions online for the world to see.

Throughout high school (and even college) I’ve always been known as “the kid that can fix your computer”.  After reinstalling numerous operating systems, and removing viruses off of countless computers, I have come to the conclusion that porn and technology are a bad combination.  It wasn’t until my senior year of high school that I even thought about pursuing a future in computers.  During that year I took a Cisco Networking class, graduated top of my class, and found a job working for a small tech support company.  While on the job I learned the ins-and-outs of running a service based business, how to manage a computer server, but most importantly, how to manage a client.  With the money and knowledge I obtained I purchased some servers, and started to build the foundation for a successful future in the web industry.

College – I’m a Sponge

When I first applied to college for Computer Science I was disappointed to find that I was accepted for Business Management instead.  After hunting down 25 different signatures and pleading my case to enough people I was able to secure the education I wanted; a dual major in Computer Science & Computer Security, and a minor in Mathematics.  To my dismay I was eventually forced to drop Business Management due to graduation time constraints.  In spite of this, during my sophomore year I placed second in The GVTA Entrepreneurship Competition which eventually led to the formation of my first company.

Once I was settled in at school I turned into a sponge, absorbing as much information as possible.  Between classes I spent what little free time I had building more advanced database driven websites.  From the start, designing was never an issue.  With the power of a Wacom Tablet and some Adobe products I was able to comfortably leave the pencil and paper behind for pixels and vectors.  In comparison, my programming and development skills seemed limited.  It became frustrating to create a design that I could not translate to code, fortunately for me, I learned a thing or two while at school.  Now, with the ability to fluently program in over ten languages it seems I am only limited by my imagination and creativity.

Present Day – Bringing It All Together

Scouring through development blogs and experimenting with code was officially a hobby of mine.  I had a keen understanding of the material I was reading, but still could not connect the dots.  What could I do with what I knew?  Finally I stumbled across freelancing.  I must have read 100 different articles on freelance web development, it was a great way to put my skills to use, I was sold.  It was only a few weeks later that I started up Houser Media, LLC and was contacted by several potential clients who were in need of a professional web presence.  Unfortunately, with endless school work and the added responsibility of my position as a snowboard instructor I did not have the time to be a "webmaster".  I tried working with numerous content management systems (CMS) as a solution but they were all too complex for the average user.  So instead of turning good business away, I built my own CMS.  Over the course of three months and many sleepless nights I developed Site Life Management System.

Since the initial development of Site Life it has really taken on a life of its own.  After entering the CMS in the 9^th Annual GVTA Business Plan Competition and placing second, I obtained office space and hired my first employees.  Most recently I developed the first-ever Automatic SEO Tool called Optimize Bot, set to officially launch in early 2012.  Truth be told, it’s a good thing I’m still young!