Who am I, and what am I doing here?

I've spent much of my life trying to answer the question of, "who am I really, and what the heck am I trying to do while I'm here? Unfortunately, I still feel like I haven't come to any concrete conclusions. Yeah, I know these are some of those "life's big questions" so I'm not sure I'll ever come to any real conclusions.

This much I do know...

There are a few things I do know for sure. I have loved and lost a lot through the years, and I've learned a great deal from my experiences: both good and bad. I am a man, a dad, a husband, and an American.

I pay my taxes and I vote. I follow the rules and play nice with others. I try to do good things on a regular basis, almost every day. I try to be kind, empathetic and compassionate towards others. I like to help people. I love music, art and design. I like to cook. And of course, I like making things on computers.

About This Website

Here's some information on how the site is constructed. I made an honest effort to have things work in all browsers and operating systems, but I couldn't test for every possible configuration or scenario. Please contact me if something looks completely whacky, or if it's not working as you think it should.

The goal here is to crank out a website with a the hope that it will have a reasonable shelf-life. My old website had become stale and a hassle to maintain, so it was time to give it a fresh new look, and fix a bunch oth other stuff at the same time. I also wanted to utilize better and modern technology, so I'm using xHTML and CSS3. I'm fixing and retrofiting the site for dead old browsers like IE5 and IE6 as needed when time permits, but it's definitely not a high priority. My feeling is that it "degrades gracefully" and I've made a reasonable effort to create a good user experience, make things look decent and work well across all browsers without sacrificing a whole lot of that creamy-goodness.

Technical Specifications

I built this site using Easy Framework and PHP. I'm using jQuery to add some nice effects, and try to give my visitors a little taste of that silky user experience most front-end / user interface designers strive for.

Below is a list of the browsers I have tested this site on.

Browsers:

• Google Chrome
• Firefox 3.5.x
• Internet Explorer 8.x
• Safari 4.x

Some Well Deserved Credit

I have to show the love and give ample credit to the following people and make mention of the tools they've so graciously shared with the design community. I strongly recommend you give these tools I try. I found them invaluable in helping me to crank-out this site fairly quickly with a nice look and feel, solid functionality, and an overall positive user experience for just about everybody...

• Made with Easy Framework. Try it, you'll love it. It's Easy.
• Simple Pie. Yeah, it really is that simple — but super-incredibly powerful.
• Twitter feed uses my custom version of the Twitter Profile Widget.
• jQuery Content Slider, Rohit Singh Sengar.
• Animated header technique using my version of a script from devirtuoso.
• Button styles and inspiration via Nick La.