Allow me to reintroduce myself...

From start to finish!

My name is Ryan, i'm a 34 year old implementation engineer/Team Leader for a major software development company that specifies in inmate management in the United States. I'm originally from a small town in Pennsylvania called Altoona.

Home of the Altoona Curve.

altoona curve new logo.jpg

Growing up in in Pennsylvania was rough as I was raised by a single mother and had 3 older brothers. My mom worked 3 job for as long as I could remember and never needed a man for anything. She would leave the house way before the sun came up and would not come home until the next day, she did this 6 or 7 days a week while raising 4 boys. She was and still is my hero.
She had a small relationship/fling with my father that did not work out and he moved to Florida when things ended between them. She failed to tell him that she was about to have a baby and it's a boy. She was my mom and dad for the first 12 years of my life. My older brothers and myself had a lot of "adulting" to do at a young age as we struggled to make ends meet. We would shovel snow for hour in the freezing cold during the winter just to pay the gas and electric bill to take some stress off of my mom. It was not easy to understand at that young of an age why we would work so hard and not reap the benefits of it all. Now, as an adult, I get it and i would not change any of it for the world.

A look into the future

I just turned 12 years old and all I knew was the financial struggle that haunted my family. My Uncle owned a not so successful restaurant about 20 minutes from where we lived and he noticed a familiar face sitting in a booth one day. That face was my fathers face. The moment he realized who he was looking at, he called my mom on the phone and told her who was sitting having coffee in his restaurant, she was shocked and excited but scared at the same time because she never told him that he has a son. My uncle convinced my mom to let him explain to my dad about the whole situation and before I knew it, I was on a one way train to Orlando Florida. This was all so crazy to me as I only knew my mom to play the male and female rule in our household. After a few months of living in a big city, I started to hang around the wrong crowed of people and doing things I should not be doing at 13 years old. I was first arrested at 15 years old for breaking and entering into my middle school. Things did not get better over the next few years as I started to sell drugs, do drugs, drink, fight, steal and the list goes on. By the time i reached 21, i have already been arrested 2 handfuls of times for multiple different reasons. I had no education as I was kicked out of public schools for being a piece of shit. LOL! I started selling cocaine and living a life style that would turn in to a vicious cycle that would lead me in one of two places, dead or in jail. All while this is going on my mom started to get really sick and unable to leave the house due to the humidity and heat from Florida. My mom and dad packed up and moved back to Pennsylvania while I stayed down in Orlando trying to figure out what my next move would be. I ended up living in a shed and picking up a drug habit that was completely controlling my every move. COCAINE IS A HELL OF A DRUG!!! As the next year or so passed my mom keeps getting worse and i'm not doing much better. I needed to get the hell out of my current situation. I sold that last of the drugs I had and packed up my dog and drove 16 hours from Orlando to Altoona. I moved straight in with my mom and dad and started to rebuild my life. I got a job cooking in a local chain restaurant but it was hard to adjust to to money situation and I felt myself slipping back in to my old mindset. If all else fails, I got cocaine. This is not a good mind to have when you want to start over. I sucked it up and made the best out of things and started taking classes to get my GED. I stayed working in chain restaurants over the next few years and it was slowing breaking my mental game down. While i'm trying to keep my head on straight my mom keeps getting worse. She gets admitted in to the hospital and things were not looking good. She was diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer and COPD. This threw me in a tailspin as I could not imagine what I would do if something were to happen to her. The cancer completely took over her soul and on 10/2/2010 she passed away. Not knowing where to go or how to act I threw the biggest wall up that anyone has ever seen. My father sank into depression and did everything I could to maintain a our well being. I kept on keeping on and stayed focused on something just to pass time, not sure what I was focusing on, I just kept moving. I stayed working in restaurant business for a few more years until I was at my breaking point, mentally an physically, something needed to change or my life would be going backwards in no time. I started checking at schools in the area for computer classes because that was really the only thing I was good at, legally. I stated attending classes during the day working toward an associate degree in computer and specialized technology. I killed it. I have never been so proud of myself, EVER. I graduated with a 3.8 GPS and third in my class and things started looking up in my life for once. I was able to quit cooking food 3 week prior to getting my degree when I was offered a job at the company i did my externship at. I have hit the pavement running and have not looked back since!!

The job I needed!

I started out as a tier 1 support tech as in intern for this software development company and within 6 weeks they offered me a position. I accepted that job faster than I have ever done anything in my life. I needed a foot in the door and this was just that. Around the 12 week mark I was called into the office of the executive director for the company. He started to tell me how much of an asset I have been to the team and how fast I have picked things up and wanted to have me install interfaces instead of being a Support tech. This task came with a nice boost in pay and a new title. I signed those paper and started killing things. A few more months go by and he called me back into his office and again told me how great I have been doing and how he wanted me to spearhead a project that the company was about to start. I told him to let me know when this project starts and i'll focus 100% of my time and effort on it. I started this project not really sure of what I was getting into or how the hell I would make it work. The project is MAJOR and the volume of operations was too much to handle alone. I got to a point where I trained a full team to work the front end and the database base back end of things and was able to launch this baby up in the air. I worked on this project for the past 9 months and have got to a point that I can do it in my sleep. Last month i'm being called again into the executive directors office and this time the news is the best thing i have ever heard. They wanted me to be the team lead of this project!!!! I accepted the offer and have been killing things ever since.

Not bad for a drug dealing, drug using, high school kick out!!!

Thank you.

I wanted to take the time out to properly do an intro about my life and where i'm at. I hope someone, some where reads this and it inspires them to do better in life and want more out of life. Life is hard, make it your bitch!!
I feel like I did not have enough pics. SO, here ya go!!!

Soon, i'll post a bit of my crypto background and how that all started!
Thanks for checking my intro out! Also, sorry this is so long, I tried to summarize the best I could!