About
I guess this is where I am supposed to write about myself (with the challenge of trying to not sound like a personal ad)…
My name is Aaron. I am thirty-something, live in Texas, born in Indiana. I graduated from Mooresville High School in 1995. I have some college under my belt, a technical college where I learned more by pursuing my own interests to keep from falling asleep in class.
I work for a small, “boutique” candle company, The Legendary Candle Co. Because we are small, I do a plethora of things ranging from actual candle making to Information Technology to bookkeeping to whatever.
As for interests and hobbies, I have a few (in no particular order): photography, law (especially consumer law), firearms and shooting sports, gardening, computers, music, history, cinema, theater and acting, and writing. I find myself with little time to pursue most of my interests.
On a professional level, I consider myself to be a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, master of few. I have held forty-nine (49) Information Technology related certifications, mostly through BrainBench. I am a competent network engineer, web designer and developer, and LAMP administrator. I do marketing and public, customer, and vendor relations. I define myself as semi-competent at PhotoShop, Illustrator, Acrobat, and the like, though some might call me a bit of a hack at it. By necessity, I have learned much about small business accounting (especially QuickBooks – though I loathe that software).
Before I came to my current employer, I worked as a consumer credit advocate. The experience was all at once educational, rewarding, stressful, and frustrating. In this position, I would consult consumers about their current credit report and scores, help formulate challenges to inaacurate and incomplete reporting by the credit bureaus, wait for the bureau responses, write secondary challenges, try to educate the consumer about credit and their rights, and generally offer support (of a technical nature to the company and of a credit nature to the client). Despite being well versed in consumer law, knowing that the big dogs (credit bureaus, creditors, collection agencies, and lenders) were violating and continue to violate both federal and state law wore me down. There were some victories for my clients during this time. They just seemed awfully few and far between.
Anyway, I am the biological father of two incredibly gifted kids and the pseudo-adoptive father of one scary smart five year old who happens to be identified as autistic. The two oldest are twelve and ten, boy and girl respectively. They live with their mother. I live with the mother of the five year old (OK a little more than live). I am a bit of a security nut, so I hope you can respect the ambiguity in this part of my About page.
