Hey👋

I don't think I've sat down to write a personal blog post since I was in 4th grade? We had a Computer Lab one day that involved setting up a personal blogger.com blog - our homework was to write our first post. I can still remember the rows of iMacs (opens in a new tab) in just about every color of the rainbow lining the dark, humid room on the Second Floor of our Elementary School.

20 years later - I'm still doing the same, but the tech is a little quicker, my monitor is a little wider, and video games are a little better looking (your mind will be blown when you play Garry's mod for the first time, 20 year-ago me.) The tech is a little more involved too, but it's okay because that's part of what makes it fun - you've cut out your own little piece of the web.

It's funny - As an incentive for working on this 'project', I've told myself that I can buy one of the new colored iMacs as my 'Work Computer' when I land a big-boy coding job.

Growing up is about turning in the RGB Keyboard for something a little less 'gamer'

I've always had a thing for computers. Growing up, we had a Dell Windows 98 machine that my dad needed for work - I didn't really realize it until now, but that guy is an Excel Wiz. He worked for Minnesota Mosquito Control in college and use to run their books.

One of my first 'computer projects' was putting together a clip-art PowerPoint of 'my house through the seasons'; each slide represented what my house looked like month-by-month. This might blow your fuckin' mind depending on how old you are: Instead of a near limitless amount of 'images' you can pull from the internet these days, back in my days, you would buy 'Clip Art CDs' that you could install which included Graphics for just about anything you could want. It was DLC for PowerPoint before DLC was even a thing.

Outside of this, dad and I would sometimes play Need For Speed III: Hot Pursuit (opens in a new tab) or Electronic Arts Presents: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003 for Microsoft Windows (opens in a new tab). I picked it all up pretty quick, and I'm glad I did because that penchant for 'getting a handle on computer systems' is one of the reasons I'm where I'm at currently as a professional, and why I'm even typing this post.

In High School, I was too busy going through Puberty and playing Video Games to actually give a shit about computer engineering. I didn't really have an online presence like a Facebook account until I was in 9th grade. That Passion for computers fed my passion for gaming - before I got my first Dell Laptop from my Grandparents (Love you Yaya, I know you're keeping tabs on me still), I was a Nintendo kid.

Hell, I didn't own a Halo until Halo 3, but you bet your ass I was playing Halo before that. But nothing was the same as League of Legends.

Through High School, I dipped my toe in just about every social network out there, even the ones we don't hear about any more (YikYak, anyone?) I also helped run a Garry's Mod server as an Admin, and met some people I still talk to from time to time. If you guys are reading this, some of my best memories of playing games are with you guys.

I didn't really express any interest in figuring out how the internet worked until I graduated from High School. As a college freshman, I landed on 'kind of thinking that maybe doing something which now would resemble front end web development' as my Major. At the time, there was oddly a very strong emphasis on freshmen needing to have a strong understanding of Math in order to get accepted into the "Computer Science" program at Winona State University in Winona, Minnesota.

I don't think that we had a really great way of 'teaching' web development back in 2012. My first experience with 'coding' was in my 7AM 'Introduction to Java' freshman year CompSci class. Java is great if you want to write lower level computer applications (at the time, the most used Java App in the world was probably Minecraft), but isn't exactly what we were using to write the web in 2012.

And he never touched another line of Java again

And that was about it in the 'web development' space for 18-year-old Ryan. He ended up switching schools, switching majors to mass comm, then once more to advertising before graduating in 2016 to immediatly start work as a Support Agent at a local Startup Called CoScheudle (opens in a new tab). I'm sure I'll have more to write about CoScheudle later.

I spent 4 years at CoSchedule before ping-ponging around back to Minneapolis, a stint at a Call Center (I was this 🤏 close to working as a team lead at this one maaaaan), and then landing my current position at Mediavine (thanks, Andrew!) as a Support Engineer.

It's been really nice here - It's the most work-life balance I've ever had, I'm really well compensated for my time, and adtech is a great industry to work in if you like stability (for now.) I'm still leveraging the support skills I learned when I was a wee postgrad, but it turns out getting really good at something gives you more time to focus on other skills.

That leads us to about a year ago - Since swearing off web development back in college, I bounced on/off learning JavaScript (this was after I learned we use JavaScript to make the web do cool shit) through apps like FreeCodeCamp and Codecademy, but nothing really stuck until about a year ago.

Since then, I've been spending more and more time working on my craft - I wouldn't say I'm great, but I'm great at reminding myself that everyone starts a little dumb at first, and it's okay to make mistakes. These days, I'll try and spend at least an hour a day looking at, writing, or learning about code, all while reminding myself that it's cool if I can't make it to code-time on any given day, sometimes work kicks your ass, and you need to take a bath or two.

bennok.zone

I guess that just about catches us up to now - would it surprise you if I told you that I wrote all of this while maybe a little high on a Sunday in January? Any good web developer needs some type of platform to stand up and announce, "hey, I'm doing cool shit over here, come check me out!", and that's what I want this blog to be.

As I learn and grow, I'll figure out how to make that cool shit I'm working on show up here, then I can do goofy shit like text my mom 'this cool card matching game I built that has photos of my dogs' with a link to the coolest thing I recently put on my internet-corner.

The other half of this is a place for words - Twitter kind of use to be about people sharing their lives, but it's kind of just turned into a place to consume content. That's cool, but I need something that's a little more 'just words'.

Anyways, the dogs are bugging me for some playtime. Thanks for reading.

-Ryan