Who I Am

I didn't craft malicious hacks in my dad's garage. I didn't start a band there, either. That's where I learned about cars, though. The band was around that time, too - but in my high-school's basement. The hacks came later.

I was 9 when Unix was created. It was not until I was 39, however, that I really understood and used it.

I studied teaching, and practiced some. Some young people still say they are grateful to me for initiating them into the mysteries of the English language. I hope they are honest.

I practiced journalism - and studied some. When the Berlin wall fell and communism in Eastern Europe crumbled, I was spreading propaganda for the Bulgarian National Radio. Later on, a three-month gig with the Voice of America evened the odds.

I got a Masters in Journalism - and became a Web developer. I wrote a lot of decent front-end code during my 11-year tenure with Cars.com. Some of that code is still on the site, years after my departure. It's not the beauty of my code, they just forgot to update or remove some sections.

I spent four years at Sears, working on a different project every year - ServiceLive.com, SearsCommercial.com, Sears Mobile and Sears.com itself. When I interviewed with Orbitz later on, a senior manager asked me, "How did you last 4 years at Sears?!"

At Networked Insights, I led a team of four talented UI engineers in overhauling their SocialSense (now Kairos) marketing analytics platform - we gave it a modern look and a rich collection of data visualization widgets. The company thanked me by laying me off when it hit hard times.

A month after I started at Orbitz, it got bought by Expedia. In the lull of the transition I thought I'd start a new Web-UI tech blog.
I tried this in the past and didn't get far: http://dev.stoicheff.com.