My name is Andrew, and this is my website. I’m a weird guy, just to warn you all. I’ve worked in restaurants since I was basically 15. I’ve been playing around with computers for the last 10 years are so, and I am the General Manager at a busy and fairly successful steak house. I really enjoy the odd programming I’ve done here and there. Made a few websites (not this one, this one is wordpress). Automated a few odds and ends here and there. 

I went to St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I’ve done a lot of work going the the Sommelier Certification program with the Court of Master Sommeliers. I’ve been getting VERY into statistics and discreet mathematics, and will likely be writing about that a lot. I’m married, have a dog (great dane) and two cats.

And, yeah. I want to share the things I do and my thoughts with the world. Like it or not, here’s my thoughts!

Today, I admit to being cheap. Specifically in the beginning of my programming journey. All of my first books came for free from the library.

Hey, you have to start somewhere! The down side of starting cheap: you end up with out of date, weird advice, and you have to struggle to get things to work. Essentially, you lose your momentum because you are more busy solving the problem of money than you are of computers. And so I’d feel like I was worthless, and I’d wonder why I was even trying to learn.

Things would continue along that path, and I would get super introspective. And, whenever I become introspective, I always start to wonder if I am even capable of learning programming in a thorough way. I start wondering if I have any natural ability and then I start going to a dark place.

I wanted to write today’s post for one big reason. One of my favorite quotes, and what has really sustained me through my darkest moments, comes from many hundreds of years before the first computer program. Specifically it is Marcus Aurelius: “Do not think that what is hard for you to master is humanly impossible; and if it is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach.”

It’s something I always have on my mind, because I often feel like there is no way I’m ever going to figure things out. But those words, spoken by the most powerful man in the known world at the time, reassuring himself, always bring a little joy and happiness to my life.