About Me

Early Years

As far as programming goes (which is what I am going to focus on here) it all actually started riding my brother Brian's computer hand-me-down's. When I was about 6 or 7 (1982) my Mother had purchased an Atari 400 (looking back that was almost a miracle considering the price of these things for a single mother of 4 kids living outside of Braham Minnesota to pull off).

This was the greatest toy ever for any 7 year old.  In with this beast was a manual with different samples of Basic code.  I would spend hours crouched in front of the television keying those samples into the machine just to see a lightning bolt flash across the screen (no monitors in those days, they were hooked straight to the television).  Of course there was no means of storage or on board memory besides a cassette recorder, so if the power went out or my Mother got upset and "turned that stupid thing" off, hours of work were flushed down the drain (luckily I was 7, and full of stubbornness and persistence).

Those old Atari's were around for a long time by todays standards.  I was well prepared in middle school for my first programming class when I walked in and saw an Atari 800, I found the Basic cartridge and got what I believe was probably my first A in any class.  Amazingly enough, thanks to the flat keyboards on these electric beasts, we learned typing on a typewriter.

At some point in the early 90's my brother (maybe sister) received a Macintosh Classic.  This was a whole new world.  I messed around with HyperCard stacks for hours, but to be honest I probably logged more hours in Oregon Trail.  The Macintosh followed me into college in 1994 where it was versatile enough to accept a 2400 baud modem and connect up to the college VAX/VMS.

College

Like most people, I started college (Bemidji State University - Go Beaver Hockey!) with my no clue what I wanted to do with my life.  I was required to take an Intro to VAX/VMS by the college my first quarter because that is where we would find our email, Gopher (not the fuzzy lawn munchers) and a few other resources we were told we couldn't live without.  This was 1994 and one of my first exposures to being "online", I was hooked when I saw the scrolling "wait" cursor made up of subsequent \|/ characters in the Lynx browser.  I plotted the course for 3 years (I cheated and took a few intro college courses in high school on a half/half basis) and worked my way towards my MIS (management information systems, think half business, half programming) degree.

Side story:  I met my wife in 1995 on the ISCA BBS (yes, the BBS is still around).  She was attending St. Cloud State University and was drug by some other friends to the computer lab on campus kicking and screaming and forcibly placed into said BBS.  We talked for months, finally met, next Fall moved in together to an off campus apartment.  Her parents weren't very pleased, online dating wasn't as accepted back then as it is rampant today.

In 1996 I got lucky and found my first real computer job on campus at computer services.  This wasn't the computer lab, this was upstairs working with the guy responsible for overseeing the daily operations of the mainframes.  My boss at the time showed me a few secrets about the VAX system, and shortly after that I had my first website online.  This was an amazing job to have as I hit my final programming classes, a little extra compile time, and some undocumented features on the mainframe went a long way back then.

Professional Career

Through college recruiting I landed a job with Unisys when I graduated in 1998.  Mainframes were still rampant in the business world and boy did Unisys have a few (I'm talking clean rooms, secure access, bomb shelter, the whole works).  I worked in the cargo/freight loading division (not moving boxes, the cubicle farm nerd side of it).  It was my job to make some old Fortran 77 run smoother and work towards the next version of the software.  This was some amazing code (and a lot of it), you would be surprised what goes into tracking airline freight from destination to destination, not to mention the booking complexities.  The job was amazing though.  I had frequent meetings with clients at Lufthansa in Germany (they came to the states a lot regretfully, although I went to Germany when I was little to visit my oldest brother on a military base) and spent 3 weeks in Hong Kong working with Cathay Pacific.  Eventually we started a project bringing the mainframe systems online for Delta, Varig, Lufthansa and Cathay Pacific.  Freight forwarders could now book and track their shipments online, there was much rejoicing.

I left Unisys for Shavlik Technologies in 2000 (a big panic year for programmers, well, 1999 was probably worse, but mainly for banks, airlines weren't as affected as the media would have led you to believe).  I wanted to find a family run business focused on web development, and this fit the bill (not to mention a great location).  As a consultant, it was my job just to "keep up" and learn things on the fly.  While consulting you are your own project manager, designer and developer.  I loved the job to be honest.  Every few weeks was something new.  I worked on systems for Nabisco's (eventually Kraft's) sales reps to order sales materials through a secure online shopping cart (who knows what a Site Server Commerce pipeline is?  raise your hand!) and with Microsoft, helping out with the various security products Shavlik sold.  If you remember a brief period of time General Mills had an organic cereal called Sunrise, that was me behind the scenes entrenched in the code.  I wrote a custom content management and ecommerce system for a few clients, and survived the first big dot com crash installing corporate intranets for clients.  Eventually the focus of the company shifted to corporate security and I transitioned into network and server lock downs, with the code audits becoming the primary focus.  I took my first real vacation after spending a week in @stake security training by dragging my bored wife along for the ride and then giving her a long weekend in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina (and there was much rejoicing).

I really wanted to get back to the consulting game which was dwindling at Shavlik.  I went to work for Risdall Advertising Agency in 2003.  They used Shavlik for a lot of their back end coding during the time I was there.  I had already worked with several of the project leads and knew most of the people there by name anyways.  Risdall is where I am at today (yes, this wall of text is nearing an end).  I think being with a place for 7+ years goes a long way in my industry for making the statement of being a great place to work. The project work is pretty diverse at Risdall, so to keep up I created a nice interactive Portfolio page, otherwise I try to keep the list up to date on my profile page on the Risdall websiste so go there if you desire more details.

Personal Life

There isn't much to say here, yes, I have a personal life.  I already told you how I met my wife, the story is pretty standard from there.  We got married right out of college, spend summers at a family cabin in Shell Lake, Wisconsin (aka, heaven on earth), and winters just trying to survive the cold until the next summer.  In 2007 we adopted a 3 month old girl that has the same genetic condition as my wife (Turner's Syndrome), but nothing slows either of them down.  With both of them having issues with their heart, you would think they would occasionally take a break.  At home I basically use every fiber of my being to keep up.  It will be an amazing world for my little girl. To think where I am today from starting with an Atari 400, this little girl is playing Dora games on the Wii and my Droid phone.  I think I can have her doing basic HTML by 5 at the latest.  She is already emailing Grandma and Uncle (tricky way to make her sit down and work on letters and sentences.

That about sums it up though, for the 2 people that ever read this (I think big) feel free to contact me (bdmurray at gmail) with any questions or just to say "I read your wall of text and enjoyed it!", or "God what a train wreck, I want my 5 minutes back!", all comments are welcome below as well (I have moderation control of course).