Black Belt Productivity

Frank hit me with this blogmeme, so I will extend the tradition.

As a kid

Mr. Mertle, from The Sandlot, said, “Baseball is life, and I was good at it.” That sums up my childhood. All that I ever wanted to do was play ball. I also idolized Pete Rose growing up. Now, that may not have such a good thing, but in the 70s it was awesome. I remember that in elementary school, we did a Hero Report. We had to research the subject and then dress up like them and give our reports. I was Pete Rose for a day.

As a teenager

No surprise, it was still baseball. I played ball for my high school team in the early 1980s. I also remember during my senior year, I had already made the choice to attend the University of Alabama. I was at a Mardi Gras parade, because I grew up in New Orleans, that I wanted to try to walk on to the UA Baseball team. I made plans to get back into shape, and work on my skills. Honestly, I was not the best hitter in high school, but I was tall (at 6′ 5″), and I was pretty good defensively at first base.

Now

I am the Computer Systems Manager (read 1-man IT Department) for the City of Northport, Alabama. I really love my job. I am learning so much about IT it isn’t even funny. I got into computer early in life (our first was an Apple IIe, then to a Mac Classic, then an LCIII, and finally a PowerCenter 120, from the illfated licensing program). I did not even sit behind a Windows machine until AFTER I graduated college in 1994. Now the circle is complete as I type this on my MacBook Pro. I still like Windows and I am a Microsoft fan, but I LOVE this MacBook Pro. Some have called me a FanBoy…but I get so much more done and get it done faster on this machine that it is insane.

Later

My IT career started in the late ’90s when I was the first Technical Support Specialist at my first real job after college. I really enjoyed talking to customers and helping them out. Now, almost 12 years later, I think that I have found my calling within IT. I have started to train to enter the Information Security realm in IT. It has fascinated me for the last couple of years, and I have finally decided to make myself a security professional. It will be a lot of hard work, but I have made some relationships within the industry and they are helping me on my journey.

Well, that is it. So now I am passing the torch to Jamie, Andy, Emory, GTDWannabe, and Kevin.