How’d I get into technology? I’ve been asked this a lot and the answer really boils down to the fact I’m incredibly curious as to how things work. I vividly remember taking apart a broken mechanical pencil sharpener and fixing it when I was six or so years old. From there I evolved into tearing apart robot parts and using Legos to make motorized boats or something else to tweak. And, of course, pretending I had high tech computer labs in my closet when I was a kid complete with paper keyboards and monitors everywhere. Needless to say, I’ve always loved immersing myself around cool gadgets!

When I wanted my first laptop in the early 00’s my parents had no idea where to start. Laptops were bulky, I knew nothing about OSX and they were incredibly expensive. Looking through third party computer shops in the Indianapolis area we finally decided on a business focused VTech laptop that included a word processor, basic spreadsheet capability and online connectivity through a (gasp!) serial port. Shamefully, I didn’t have much use for this as a ten year old and we ultimately sold it as it was collecting dust. However, this did get me exploring Windows utilities more and lead to our first Gateway Desktop – massive cow box and all!

Although I now know it was illegal, while in middle school I used to hack me and my friend's Xbox 360's so that we could download games online. I mainly did it because I wanted to play my favorite game, Gears of War, a few weeks early. Once I saw that it was available on torrent sites I taught myself how to do it. You could remove the Xbox 360's disc drive and using a Linux script, reflash the firmware so DRM was removed. I even was able to play online for awhile. It wasn't until I played a game weeks before it came out online where a developer asked how I was able to get into the online lobby. After that I was quickly blacklisted from Xbox Live but, hey, it was fun while it lasted. I could at least play single player games from the console without a problem.

When in high school I was one of the first people to get an iPod Touch. This was before the App Store was a thing but I was one of the first people to jailbreak it. What did I do? Put on a Game Boy emulator of course! It allowed me to play Pokemon in school because I could easily hide the device behind a text book to make it look like I was reading.

Ever since the Nexus One was announced by Google I wanted an Android phone. But because my family used Verizon at the time I couldn't use their device. That is until the Droid Incredible came out. I got so into tweaking it I made custom ROMs for other people and overclocked it so I could play more demanding emulated games on it. It was a blast!

From there I even started buying high end Chinese phones and having them imported to the USA where I'd then flash them with US software and then resell them to people online. At the time you couldn't get those phones stateside and even if you could they'd be running Chinese software. It was a blast being able to figure out how to get into the devices. Sadly, nowadays most manufacturers lock phones down so much you can't tinker like you used to be able to do.

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Above you can see my grandpa’s patents with Delco Remy/General Motors. He lead the breakthrough of (at the time) the modern nickel based car battery. Sadly, Alzheimer’s came too soon and I wasn’t able to pick his brain on the almost endless list of questions I’d have for him. Nonetheless, seeing what he was able to do has absolutely rubbed off on me. The key reason I follow the evolution of battery technology is because of him and I’d love to speak to anyone on ideas how software can drastically improve advancements in the space.

Additionally some more fun facts, my other grandpa, Arthur Welling was in the same platoon as Colonel Sanders (KFC) and Dave Thomas (Wendy’s) and was offered high level positions with both organizations and turned them down to focus on his family and business. Something that I have deep respect for! He also loved restoring and working on various cars, something else I’d love to think I picked up from him.

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