Living in Las Vegas, Nevada as a kid was a lot fun. That is if you like to play outside, and I did, well, still do really. All of my grade school years were spend exploring my world on East Monroe Street just southwest of Nellis Air Force Base.

I we lived there for 6 or 7 years and a lot of eventful things happened while we were there. Some of more eventful happenings were, to name a few. Our house was broken into and set on fire, my right eye got poked out, and I had my first kiss! Her name was Andrea. Also while there I decided what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Well, I guess I’m a grown up now and I’m not what I wanted to be when I was that small boy in Las Vegas. So let’s talk about that. As I mentioned above I lived southwest of Nellis Air Force Base. I had the fortune of living directly down the main runway, exactly where the F-16 Thunderbirds would make a sharp climb straight up and head for the sky.

I remember as a kid just laying on my trampoline watching them for hours as they would run drills and practice their maneuvers directly over my house!

These amazing planes and the soldiers piloting them really inspired me, so much so in fact, that I decided to become an Air Force pilot and eventually become a space shuttle pilot. Then, one of the “eventful happenings” happened. When I was 9 years old (my 10th year), I had an accident that deprived me of vision in my right eye.

Years later and after many surgeries and complications the doctors had to remove the eye and fit me with a prosthesis.

What I’ve Become

I guess partly because of the accident and my shattered childhood dreams, I stumbled around college for a few years, attempting to study medicine, the law, engineering and finally found my home in Anthropology (definition: Wikipedia). I’ve always loved learning about human societies so I decided to focus on the study of power in human relationships and on primate societies as an analog to human societies.

While I was at the University of Utah I was able to land a wonderful job in the Human Genetics department as part of the IT crew. I worked there for 4.5 years while a student and really found a love and passion for technology and the Internet.

After fumbling around for a couple of years trying to be a lawyer and a financial planner (I’m just not a good salesman), I decided to head back to technology.

With a couple of good friends I co-founded and I am the CHM (Chief Monkey Hugger) of HugaMonkey, a company that manufactures and sells top notch baby carriers. We’re growing very quickly and selling a lot of baby slings, we have four employees and have just outsourced our manufacturing.

I’ve landed at OrangeSoda a search engine marketing firm with a focus on businesses who have a local target audience. Because we’re so good at what we do we have a lot of clients who have a national or even worldwide focus. My position here is a Search Optimization Manager – which means I manage the search engine optimization campaigns.