Abstract Musings

I figured I should put up a little blurb about myself. I suppose I’ll update this from time to time.

I am a web developer for the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Since February of 2004, I have been the lead programmer in Web Services for myUT.

Debuting in March 2005, as part of the Student Information Systems (SIS) project, was a set of tools I built for the Knoxville Timetable. One allows for the creation of PDF versions of the Knoxville timetable, and the other is an interface for searching the timetable for specific classes. The PDF piece is a Java application; my first attempt at programming in Java. I am pleased at how the application turned out, but I suspect I will revisit it in the future as my knowledge of Java grows.

Before the Timetable project, I was involved in the development of an application for registering and managing applicants for the UT Dance Marathon, and also the University Calendar of Events. I have begun work on version two of the events calendar, which besides some performance improvements, one of the ideas we are looking to add to it is allowing an XML feed to publish events, along the lines of an RSS feed; so that, other university departments and people could integrate events in the calendar into their own web sites. Also, I was involved in the development of an application for management and display of the University’s Policies & Procedures. The policies are created and edited through a separate management application, while another application allows the policies to be displayed and searched.

Another project I have been heavily involved in over much of the last year has been development of the university’s Institutional Improvement program. The program has two goals: one is for the university-wide accreditation through the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), and the other is the long-term identification of strategies for institutional improvement of the university. I built a good bit of the data entry and display pieces for the program, and just like the events calendar, I am currently working on version two. Prior to that in spring of 2003, I was primarily involved in the redesign of the university’s web site, and the creation of templates for departmental use based on this design. I also have several other projects underway, most of which aren’t near completion or require access to myUT to use them, so I won’t bother to mention them. Although, I may post some links here when future projects are finished.

Some Personal Details

I played alto saxophone and baritone saxophone throughout junior and senior high school. My favorite saxophonists are Branford Marsalis, Gary Mulligan and Paul Desmond. I also composed a short piece for concert band, which was performed by my high school band a couple of years after I graduated. I wrote the piece in 1991 to commemorate the bicentennial anniversary of Mozart’s death in 1791 and the passing of Leonard Bernstein in October 1990. I juxtaposed the styles of the two great composers. For Bernstein, I chose to use modern jazz melodies, rhythms and instrumentation. And for Mozart, I choose to use the sonata form, which was a common musical form used by Mozart and his contemporaries in the Classical period. When I have some time, I’ll digitize the recording and put a link to it up here.

In August of 1992, my parents, older brother and I were living in Miami when Hurricane Andrew came through town. We had chosen to stay in our home and ride out the storm. Big mistake!!! We were in the house when a big boom sounding like a howitzer came from our living room. It turns out that part of the roof of our house was violently removed by the wind and the windows of our living room were actually blown out of place. We spent the remainder of that night huddled in a bathroom-the only room in our house with no windows in it. And despite the trio of hurricanes which criss-crossed Florida in 2004, my family refuses to leave South Florida. I am happy to report that this time around nothing remarkable happened.

Lately, most of my reading has consisted of non-fiction. I recently finished An Army at Dawn by Rick Atkinson, about the Allied campaign in North Africa, the infancy and growth of the U.S. Army in World War II, and the decline of the Axis powers in Europe. I enjoyed the book, as I was not familiar with the Allied campaign in North Africa. I am eagerly awaiting the next installment on the Allied campaign in Sicily and Italy. I also recently finished two books by Victor Davis Hanson, Carnage and Culture and Ripples of Battle. And before those, I read Simon Schama’s three-volume History of Britain. My father-in-law, who is a retired naval officer, managed to get me a copy of Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces by Tom Clancy and Gen. Carl Stiner (ret.), which Gen. Stiner was kind enough to autograph for me. I’ve also been known to enjoy books by Issac Asimov, Larry Niven and J.R.R. Tolkein.

My other interests include hiking, bicycling, photography and travel. On a recent trip to Las Vegas with my wife, I managed to combine a few of these and hiked a lot in Joshua Tree, Death Valley, Yosemite, Sequoia & King’s Canyon National Parks, and Mojave National Preserve, among other places.