The short version

I'm a geeky farm girl with a lot of hobbies that involve either computers or animals. And His Imperial Kittenness Wayne is the cutest kitty out there. *nod* I know this is true because he knows it. Yes, the picture to the side is Wayne, and if you'd like to know his history, I suggest you click here.

The long version

We moved to Old Willow Farm about a year after my parents bought the property, and a day before my 10th birthday. It's been home -- no matter where I've gone, and despite the fact I've moved out now -- ever since. The name comes from the roughly century-old willow near the center of the property. We've raised cats, dogs, pigeons, chickens, guinea birds, bobwhite quail, turkeys, geese, ducks, rabbits, goats, horses, cows, and pigs during various times over the past twelve years. At one point, it was all of the above at the same time.

Nope, neither I nor any of my family are animal-crazy. Nope. Not at all. I just currently have four cats, and every memory card for the digital camera filled with pictures of them being cute for no reason at all. Really.

My hobbies from elementary school to high school graduation included band, 4-H, and reading. While I no longer play the cornet (close cousin to the trumpet), I've not lost my love for music. (This has lead to the joke at work that I'm practicing for try-outs for American Idol.) I've also spent time attempting to work on my sketching, but was never able to get any of the art teachers in school to look critically at my work, and eventually gave up.

Amazingly enough, for something that so defines my life, the computer geekness only picked up about my sophomore year of high school. Yes, I'd been playing computer games long before that, but I'd never cracked a case before that. Didn't take very long for me to become completely corrupted by the geekness, however, and I can't go more than a few hours without a computer before the withdrawal symptoms start. ;)

I have a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Houston, and, believe it or not, it's actually a good pairing with a strong talent for computers. While I'm currently not using my biology degree for paying work, being able to run the reports needed from lab results in school made my life a LOT easier. Whether or not I'll ever actually work in the biology field is up in the air. I'd like to, but at the same time, there's a LOT of things I want to do, and I simply don't have enough clones of myself to do them all.

By the time I had graduated from college, my suppressed artistic talent had found a place to express itself again -- and a way to combine a strong sense of perfectionism with visual appeal. The Brazoria County 4-H page was one of the first websites I designed, and I was hooked. I swear, there's something about writing good, clean code that's addicting.

In fact, it was web design that started my tumble into working with 3D graphics, which I started working on as an actual small scale business at the insistence of friends who hold a higher opinion of my artwork than I do myself. I'm learning as I go, the way I do with everything, but so far the results haven't been half-bad, saying so myself. But if you want a better opinion than mine, I suggest you take a look yourself.