I was born (1985), raised and currently reside in Ventura, California. My great-grandparents emigrated from Mexico on my mother's side and from France and Germany on my father's side. I am a computer programmer with a specialty in ASP.NET driven web sites. See my résumé.

In January 2011, I transitioned from an employee with Interwest Consulting Group to an independent contractor. Interwest remains an important client. I am seeking additional clients with small-to-medium-sized programming projects, especially web applications. I am also available for mathematics tutoring and household financial planning.

I bicycle, cook, reddit, Minecraft and study monetary theory. I drive my girlfriend crazy.

Computer Programming

When I started kindergarten, Mom bought a first-day-of-school scrapbook and we dutifully filled it out each year thereafter. One question asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Every single year, I answered, "computer engineer."

In 1994, Dad finally bought a computer. It was a state-of-the-art Pentium 90. I was 9 years old and my mission was getting computer games to run. If computers give you grief now, try thinking back to the early 90's. Every day was a battle for precious conventional memory. I didn't want to have to wait for Dad so I taught myself the joys of memory management and BASIC.

The computer world is magical for the young. Age discrimination - all prejudice in fact - is impossible because the computer world is anonymous. The Internet is naturally meritocratic. No one cares where or even whether you went to school. Formal education goes obsolete so quickly that truly every good programmer is self-taught.

My first real gig was building The City of Westlake Village's web site when I was 15 (2000 - 2006). Nobody cared that I was too young to drive. All that mattered was that I deliver the code. I delivered. The City staff were teriffic. I was impressed upon by the culture shock moving between Westlake Village City Hall, where I was a professional, and high school, where...not so much. So, I took the GED (technically CHSPE), enrolled in college and got a job at Interwest, with whom I continue to do business.

Most of my experience is in building ASP.NET web applications. In other words, I build web sites that interact with databases. I am, however, happy to tackle other kinds of projects.

Mathematics and Tutoring

I received a B.S. in mathematics in 2008 from CalPoly in San Luis Obispo. Though rarely a career in itself, mathematics is a solid secondary skill. Studying mathematics unlocks the technical world. The ability to read math is a valuable kind of literacy.

The K-12 education system is rotten from the curriculum to the Union to standardized testing. The incentives are all wrong. K-12 mathematics is taught especially poorly. The extreme focus on notation and computation misses the key point: describing and solving problems. It is like trying to teach music without sound. Imagine a music education without instruments or recordings. Imagine that there was only reading and writing of sheet music. It would be horrible!

If math were what schools call math, I'd hate it too. Fortunately, I grew up with an engineer for a father. We played games like poker and Sim City. We did some carpentry. We read about how things worked. For me, math has never been separate from the so-called "real world." Math is many things to many people but most of the time it is a language for talking about nature. Isn't that a language worth learning?

I tutor 5^th graders and up. Don't be shy, adults. Math isn't just for your kids. In fact, there's no more powerful message you can send your kids than setting an example. I tutor through third semester (multi-variable) calculus though, as I have hinted, I prioritize building math muscle over the homework du jour. The goal isn't to sneak across the finish line. I'm training mathletes over here! The A's and B's come naturally in due time.

Speaking of which, my math lessons involve a lot of running around. It's the only way to go with kids and as for adults, I sometimes wonder if the exercise is more important than the math.

My rate is flexible but estimate $30 per hour. I like to barter, too! If my fee would cause you financial hardship, talk to me and we'll try to figure something out. Send me an e-mail or give me a call so we can set up a meeting.

Financial Planning

My first foray into finance was loansharking my sister. When I was 9, she was 15. Teenage girls need money. If she paid me back within a week, I did not charge any interest. She always thought that she'd pay me back in time but she rarely did. After the first week was up, I charged 10% interest per week, compounding. That works out to about a 14000% APR. Yeah, I was pretty brutal.

I have since discovered my conscience. My motto these days is, "neither a lender nor a borrower be." There is good reason that the Qur'an and arguably the Bible forbid usury (charging interest): the average person has no appreciation for the terror brought by compounding interest. Those that do understand can conquer societies from within, as bankers. In the Bible, Jesus overturns the tables of the money-changers. If Jesus were to come back today, he would head straight to Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and all the rest.

The financial industry attracts far too many mathematicians. It pays well. It offers many of the few careers in mathematics itself. It presents the opportunity make massive amounts of money purely for being correct, without doing exactly anything. That, in a nutshell, is mathematical vanity.

I did not find a career on Wall Street because, as I mentioned, I have a conscience. I could not, however, avoid a fascination with economics, money and finance. Since graduating from college in 2008, I have studied monetary theory with the same zeal as I had studied computer programming in years prior.

Don't be fooled by nice suits. Don't trust your money with the people that failed to predict the tech bubble, the housing bubble and are now failing to recognize the US Treasury bubble.

Let me help you invest your money wisely. I don't sell any esoteric "financial products" nor do I run a hedge fund. I'm just selling sound mathematical sense.