Growing up in the north woods of WI just outside a town of 500 people and working in my father's wood manufacturing plant I didn’t have much of a technology influence. Maybe that’s why I became fascinated and obsessed with computers starting in the early 80’s when I was about 10 years old. I still remember unpacking our brand new Commodore Vic 20 like I remember the birth of my own children. That day the whole family was excited with this device that seemed to hold so much potential yet didn’t seem to really do anything practical. We spent the next couple days figuring out what we can do with it and waiting what seemed like an eternity to load the hangman game from the tape drive. After a few days the rest of the family lost interest, I never understood that. How could you loose interest in something so revolutionary with so much potential? I didn’t care, that just meant I didn’t have to share it with anyone. I started learning how to program the computer to make sounds on my command using pokes and peeks from examples in the manual. I got to the point that I could write the programs faster than loading them from tape, unfortunately the next day I would have to power it back on and write it from scratch again. I used the Vic 20 as a musical keyboard for my 8’th grade science fair project and told my mother “when I grow up I want to be a computer programmer”. After about a year or so the slo-blo fuse blew and that was it for the Vic 20.
A year or so went past and my father came home from an auction with a bunch of tools for the plant and a box with a TRS 80 Model 3, a bunch of software manuals and disks. We had a computer again. I couldn’t be more excited. Unfortunately this computer was all business, no color, no fun sounds. That’s ok, I read those boring accounting software manuals over and over learning a little more each time. I explored everything on the disks and figured stuff out. I don’t know whatever happened to that computer, maybe it died or maybe there just wasn’t any more I could do with it.
Then in my mid teens my grandmother from Maryland (who I seldom saw to talked to do to how far away she lived) send out a personal check of a sizable amount with instructions that it be used to buy a family computer. We had already been looking at computers in the Computer Shopper and at the computer store about 50 miles away in the big city of Green Bay but they were way too expensive. Now we had the means to buy one, it was just a matter of time. It was agony waiting for it to show up. Eventually it arrived, a Compaq 286, EGA Monitor, 40 Gig Hard drive, 512K RAM, 2 Button Microsoft Mouse, and an Epson Dot Matrix printer. I was in heaven again, but this time there was real potential. This computer came with Microsoft DOS, BASIC, and Microsoft Paint. My uncle gave me a copy of Sidekick (an all around PIM and editor), Dbase 3+, some DB3+ business programs, and the instruction book by Ashton Tate to go along. I didn’t have much free time anymore but found time to learn most of the DOS commands, taught myself how to program in BASIC, and how to modify those DB3+ programs for my fathers business as well as writing a few new ones. I saved what little money I had for a while and purchased Borland C++ and a stack of books to learn how to program in it. C++ was way over my head and there was no one I could ask to explain the harder things. Still I was able to make some small programs and even a game where I would shoot a box as it flew past on the screen. This computer helped me become who I am today and I am forever grateful to my grandmother for the gift.
My junior year in high school the school purchased some computers. Since I was the only one with computer experience (at least that I knew of) I did much of the setup. My drafting teacher made a deal with me, setup the drafting computer and software, show him how to use it, and do one of my drafting projects on the computer and I wouldn’t have to do other projects. Yeah I accepted that deal before he finished telling me. The other three computers were used for word processing (or typing as it was called back then) and a BASIC programming class. The teacher of that class and I had a love hate relationship. He loved me because I could help the other students; he hated me because I knew more than him. I don’t think a class went by where we didn’t argue something about the homework assignment. He would mark something wrong because it wasn’t the answer from the book, I would argue how it was still correct. He finally got the last laugh though, I got one answer wrong on the final exam but we weren’t allowed to view them (They are locked in the safe in the principal’s office he said.). That made me pretty mad, I was sure if I could just see what he had marked wrong I would be able to argue how it wasn’t wrong.
A new teacher organized a group of people for FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America). I was able to compete against others around the state for a chance to go to nationals in Washington DC. The test consisted of flowcharting a program to perform some basic accounting, then writing the program. In the absence of my handy dandy flowcharting device (real programmers don’t flowchart anyway). I used pseudo code for my flowchart I don’t think the person judging even knew what pseudo code was and he downgraded me because of it. I ended up getting third place and only first and second placements got to go to nationals. The last two years of high school consisted of school during the day and working second shift for my father’s plant. That combined with other chores gave me almost no free time. When at work I would think about programs I could write and figure out the hard stuff then write it down in a notebook.
After high school I weighed on tables at a Ponderosa (I recommend everyone spend a year weighting on tables, there is no better customer’s service training in the world). I got married and purchased a Commodore Amiga 500 and sometime after that talked some people into letting me build them PC compatible computers which turned in a small business that never made much money but gave me loads of knowledge and experience. My true desire was to program but without any schooling or experience no one would give me a job. I finally landed a computer sales job and the owner let me help build computers where there weren’t any customers. Eventually I became a full time computer technician at a couple different companies. During this time my father sold his plant and semi-retired. Eventually we started a computer business together but after a year or so of intense disagreements he left the company and I finagled a way to buy him out buy taking on a partner. I eventually sold my share of the company to my partner. I eventually landed a job at an enterprise class company by almost begging my future boss to just give me a chance with the company. My friend Pony (he always had a long pony tail so it fit) and I would spend weekends installing and configuring servers, networks, software, and playing with Linux and BSD. We learned a lot together and from each other.
I moved from computer tech to network and servers and worked for a couple very large companies. Eventually working with computers, servers, and networks started to become, dare I say mundane. It just seemed like I wasn’t learning much anymore and started solving the same problems over and over. I started teaching myself VB6 and had help from a couple programming friends I made along the way. To this day, although seldom I still bug my buddy Fuzzy to get his opinion. Early on I asked him questions over and over and no matter how stupid they were he always answered them with a smile. Eventually I started writing websites in ASP and started a small web hosting business out of my house. . I became particularly interested in the new .NET technology Microsoft was starting to promote. I ended up getting my hands on a beta version and wrote a web based scheduling application for a company before the first production version of .NET was ever released.
I was offered a contracting job at the local power plant after a phone ½ hour interview which I accepted. I finally ended up meeting my boss who was my interviewer about 6 months later. I was hired for nothing more than a body to fill a chair and assist the network administrator with duties so other projects could be completed on time. During my time there I constantly found ways to automate manual tasks through scripting or programming and wrote a computer inventory system as a quick solution to an urgent need. People in other plants starting hearing about the scripts and programs I wrote and when my contract was coming to a close I was offered a contract on the application development team managed from a plant in another state.
Then one day one of my old bosses arranged a meeting with a guy he met who had a small Internet retail company. His company that was online since 2004 had lost they’re programmer and only IT person to Microsoft. It seemed pretty risky for someone with my salary needs, a wife and children to take a position at a company with only around 10 employees total. Needless to say it was my dream job, I had to take it. It’s only been a few years but the company has grown dramatically. Sales almost double every year and our staff has doubled including a couple programmers to help me out.
In addition to the programming I’ve learned a lot about Internet marketing, SEO, order management (as we have our own home grown order management system), and the Internet retail business. Things are constantly changing and I’m constantly learning. Learning and applying what you learn are the most important things I do on the day to day basis. Although I didn’t get good grades in school, I pride myself on being self taught, no college, training, or certifications. I’m not suggesting anyone else do that, but I’ve gotten this far without it, I’m not about to change that.
This is more than enough about me, if you’ve gotten this far, I thank you for the time you took. I hope you find the information in my blog useful and please don’t hesitate to send me questions or general comments.
-Edgar E. Kneel