When I'm not learning python, breaking my own code, or doing something foolish, you'll find me spending time with my family, enjoying life in our nations capital, or escaping our nations capital to travel and see the rest of the world.
My paying job(s): I'm an Environmental Protection Specialist | Web Developer | Data Analyst | Community Manager | Life Long Learner at US EPA. Before that, I worked at Louisiana DEQ and before that I served in the US Air Force as an Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant (COTA/L) at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. I grew up in the grand metropolis known as Ville Platte, Louisiana. This is Cajun country and I was the first generation of my family to grow up speaking mostly English, rather than French.
I first became interested in computers and programming when Mom and Dad brought home a Commodore 64 and I did some rudimentary programs in BASIC. The highlight of this era was making a crude connection with a school friend over a phone line using a vicmodem. And who could forget the hours spent managing my 1984 Detroit Tigers to another World Series win with MicroLeague Baseball.
Unfortunately, I didn't take it further than that. I had an undiagnosed learning disability and a closed mindset about learning. I assumed I would be terrible at programming without ever taking a programming course. Anyway, my interest never diminished and in 2015 I finally realized learning to code is not out of reach.
I am a developer/project manager in US EPA. My current duties include: managing a nationwide community of Data Stewards, developing new data visualizations, mostly using QlikSense, and managing/developing new data projects. I'm hoping to get started with some Machine Learning projects in the future, likely in the topical area of fraud detection.
Outside of my paid work, my main goals in 2019 are to become more competent in python and its many data science libraries.
