David’s Profile

David got his start at an early age when his dad bought and brought home a Commodore Vic20 from Canadian Tire. Next would come an Apple IIe and then a 486dx by which time David would abandon programming, discover modems and accessing the outside world from his keyboard, as well as start high school. The movie War Games would be pivotal. So would the book The Hitchhikers’ Guide To The Galaxy.

When the Internet finally took off David was already well versed in how to interact online – it was there he would do most of his learning. Towards the end of high school David would start a (short-lived) online music magazine in the Ottawa area which would teach him the basics of web hosting, web pages, and web domains. Also on the upside it got him free entry into multiple concerts and clubs for almost a year!

Next would come college and a program called “Business Information Systems” which taught David about economics, accounting, marketing, Business English, and Windows 3.1. The year was 1995. The class was concerned why they weren’t getting taught about this new thing called “Windows 95” – it would turn out not to matter for David. He got his own copy of Windows 95 and checked it out. From here on he would continue this pattern of finding and trying software out to teach himself new things and keep up with the ever changing computer world.

After college is when David moved to the West Coast and found the Gulf Islands. Resolving to someday make them his home he got a job as a bicycle courier in Vancouver and started the long journey to Gabriola. It wasn’t so long as he feared.

While couriering David met his future wife, his Web Designer, and he realized he was done with Vancouver. When he got laid off from the company he then worked for it turned out to be a fantastic opportunity – so he and his girlfriend-not-quite-his-wife-yet left Vancouver, toured the Southwestern US for a few months, attended Burningman for the second time, and then settled in Victoria where they would eventually get married and David would get formally trained on computers and networking.

A few years later after finishing some more schooling at CompuCollege, David had achieved his MCSE and got his first Network Administrator job working for a small web company in Victoria. They would cancel his contract a few years later when the money ran out, which was a common pattern for web companies at the time. David was surprised but would move on to work for the billionaire Matthews family at a company then called NewHeights Software (who knows what they are called now).

At NewHeights David truly found his calling and enjoyed much success deploying networks, supporting his users, and keeping the whole works running (with offices on several continents and a staff of almost 100 people this was no easy task, David was the only IT staff for quite some time). Here he was exposed to everything under the sun as far as computers are concerned – from Sun Solaris Unix to Cisco routers to VoIP phones to Windows Vista. The list is huge – I won’t bore you with it faithful reader, you’ve come this far.

While at NewHeights David moved from Victoria to Gabriola, became a father twice, and decided to work from home. He now spends the majority of his free time with his two girls and the majority of his nights at the computer – hence the “sleepdeprived” name. Now you know!