My story...
Born: June 18th, 1977 in Blaj, Romania
I learned to read and write before I was 5; I was quite ingenious... but I'll let my parents tell you those stories.
Then
came elementary school, and at age 7 I became interested in computers.
At 9 (21 years ago) I wrote my first computer program.
About
the same age I started playing the guitar and learning some basic
Electronics, and later, radio telegraphy -- which I kept doing for
about 10 years.
My mother is a teacher of Mathematics, and my father was an artist who taught Photography and Painting.
I have a sister (Lili) who is 6.5 years older, and she has two kids (Valentina and Traian).
During
secondary school, my parents, noticing that I was quite literally
transparent, decided to sign me up for some sport programmes. I tried
Athletism for a while; I wasn't so bad, and I had a good teacher, but I
didn't like it too much. I then tried Wrestling, but threw a manequin
over myself once, got a bleeding nose and gave up. Eventually, my
parents signed me up with an illegal (yes, the Communism regime had it
banned!) Martial Arts instructor.
Traditional
Karate became a very important part of my life, and it still is. It has
taught me how to know myself, while Programming has taught me how to
operate with that knowledge.
Anyway;
secondary school meant, among others, the Revolution in 1989, and then
access to better computers, a better guitar, and the beginnings of
Internet.
When my school got a 2400
bps modem, I used to sneak in as early as 3 am and dial into BBS nodes.
That was the closest thing to what the Internet became today! Ah, those
were the days...
As soon as I could
borrow a decent modem (14.4kbps -- about 15 times slower than today's
networks) I set up my own BBS named BlueBoard (I was into blue things
back then and signed software as BlueSoft) and I ran that all the way
through highschool until I was well at the University (pulling strings
there for a free UUCP connection...)
I
got in (the highschool) the second on the list and started studying
Computer Science there. I probably learned a lot more programming there
than at the University, but let's keep a positive note. During
highschool I did some nice things. I surprised everybody in the 9th
grade by solving a problem, at the Olympics, using a matrix indexed by
items of arrays which were indexed by another matrix. This threw me
into the Nationals, where despite some rather poor programming, I came
out the 6th.
Highschool
was also relevant to me musically. I started my first band, and sang
with a couple of others. I did lead guitar, but also keyboards for a
little while, and managed to win 1st prize in a contest. I was (and
still am) very pretentious with what I listen to, and due to a very
good audio memory and sharp ear, I learned very easily.
Contrasting
my good hearing (and sense of smell), the video dimension is very
poorly developed with me. I have no visual memory capabilities at all,
and I am uncapable of forming an image in my mind. I think it's a birth
defect of some sort; suffice to say, over years I've developed some
reflex mechanisms that help me identify people I see often. However,
that still leaves me very embarassed when I don't recognize people I've
just met, such as the waiter in the restaurant or a new cute employee
in the elevator.
Faced
with this problem -- most of my friends learn by xeroxing a book page
in their heads, which I never could -- I never did too well in school,
except for foreign languages and Programming.
I've
always been in love with all foreign languages. I started with English
when I was 8, then German at 10, and outside school I started learning
Swedish at 13. Since then, I've caught up more or less with French,
Italian, Hungarian, Russian, Latin, even some Japanese, Czech, Danish
and Roma.
Also
in highschool I got my first job: I taught an entry-level computer
course. Looking back today, I'd love to be able to see me doing that...
I also started heavy DTP work, and took a side job for a local printing firm -- that's when I first saw the new 100MHz 486...
I
graduated highschool fairly well, with maximum or next-to-maximum
grades at all subjects, including sports. So when the time came to go
to the University, I first tried Economics, and gave up because I
couldn't learn Economics mechanically. I then tried with Geography, and
failed even more miserably -- I couldn't remember a map if I had it
painted on the back of my eyelids. So my mother did the only thing left for her to
do: locked me up for 2 months and worked with me for 10 hours a day,
teaching me just enough Mathematics to get me into the Faculty of
Mathematics and Computer Science of the Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca.
I did OK at all three exams and I moved to Cluj-Napoca to be a student.
The
first year was pretty boring -- back then the curriculum of the faculty
was mostly (and aberrantly) useless -- and I mostly just hovered around
the big computers, having a good time and not knowing what to do. One
day I went into a lab, sat at the only free console, the screen was
dark, and I pushed the power button to light it up; too bad it was the
mainframe server (that's why the seat was free), the screen was
sleeping and by pushing the button I rebooted the entire network.
Another
day I was pretending I'm doing something in the lab and the then
director of the Communications Center -- Dr. Prof. Boian -- came in,
twice my size and very nervous, and threw me out on account of my age
(and, I suppose, my state of panic).
Exactly
one year later -- learning from an assistant that I showed some
interest in hacking the University's SMTP servers -- Dr. Boian offered
me a job in the Communication Center, where I stayed for the next
couple of years or so. This -- not school -- is what I did in
Cluj-Napoca.
At the Center I was
dial-up chief, network administrator, often developer, and generally
did stuff ranging from drilling holes for cable, to configuring HTTP
proxy servers on RedHat 4 boxes. I worked with extraordinary people
there, such as Liana Lazar, Vlad Pacuraru, Gerdi Chati, Dan Melnic,
Gabi Ciplea (current director) and Alin Moldovan (current CTO of Astral
Telecom). Others were also there and I have good memories of them.
Health
and family problems urged my return to Blaj, where I moved back and
started working in various places: a mobile phones store, a local
radio, or doing DTP for a living. Soon, with my good friend, Silviu
Margin, we started our own ISP and computers shop, which didn't do too
bad considering the horrible economic situation; also, in the same
time, I started teaching Programming at a highschool and at a college.
This
ISP business came out pretty neat. Our servers handled post-paid and
pre-paid customers, had a billing system with real-time customer care,
dial-up and leased line, web/ftp presence and a fairly good QoS control
system. Everything was developed in-house; we didn't pay for a single
byte of software.
So
I was now a teacher-developer-designer-networker-publisher, and on top
of that, I took Music a bit more seriously and recorded a few songs in
a more professional environment. More on that in the Music section.
Another
event related to this is the invitation that I've received from the
Romanian Radio League to Bucharest, in gratitude for a piece a software
that I had developed in a few years, that apparently has made easier
the lives of many people from many countries. That was my first real
visit to Bucharest, and it lasted for 2 days. I was overly impressed by
the appreciation shown to me, and I continued working at that software
until 16 bit platforms became obsolete.
One
Christmas night, a former higschool mate got so upset over how little
money I was making for all these things, that he actually convinced me
to send my CV to Connex. To my
surprise, I was invited for an interview in Bucharest, which lasted for
7 hours and consisted of 5 distinct sessions. Nobody else I know in
Connex had, to my knowledge, such a hard time getting in the company. A
little later I got an offer, and in February 2002 I moved to Bucharest,
as Services Developer in the "Technology and Services Development"
Department.
During the first 3 years in Connex I did many things, mostly covered by non-disclosure contracts. But generally
they involved technical relations with vendors, software development, web design, graphics design (see portfolio), animation, audio recording and editing,
video processing, video camera operating, directing and scripting (photo1, photo2), good language and communication skills, direct customer relationship skills (photo)
and generally a lot more than I thought when I took the job. I seem to
have done OK with all these, and later made a lateral step in my
career, by moving to the Marketing department, where I worked as a
Consumer Market Project Manager.
Then I got really tired of the corporate way of doing things and, almost 1 year later, I returned to IT, joining one of
the best team of IT professionals I've even had the luck to work with: Modulo Consulting. And almost a year later, I became the Managing Director of the Romanian branch of a Belgian software company named Twodecode Technologies.
Apart
from the job, after I came to Bucharest I tried joining a number of
rock groups, but hardly found the time to commit to music. I tried to
keep up with Radio too, but couldn't. I joined an excellent Wado Ryu club (sensei Nukina Nobuyuki - 4 dan), but after a few months I developed sever nerve problems at my left elbow and couldn't keep up, before I could get at the blue belt exam.
I
got married once, in 2002, but only did the civil ceremony.
Unfortunately that proved to be a mistake which cost us a long divorce.
Two years later, I married a SMURD
emergency doctor named Carmen (she's a very capable, smart, strong but
delicate woman and I must remember to bring her flowers more often),
and she is now sleeping 2 steps away to my left.
Soon after that, our little girl named Alexandra was born (see photos here). And then we got fed up with Bucharest and moved to Tg. Mures, where I started a small outsourcing business called Indigenious Development.
All
things considered, I had a good life so far, and I plan to make the
best of every moment. I don't waste too much time planning, because, as
a man I otherwise dislike said, "life is what happens while you're busy making other plans".
All we have is the now, and I intend to make the best of every fraction of now that I have.