Biography
Last Updated (Wednesday, 24 September 2008 21:23) Written by Corey Chapman Wednesday, 24 September 2008 00:00
I was born in Creve Coeur, Missouri, on July 31, 1981. I lived in Villa Ridge for about 2 years, then I lived in a small house in Pacific for 17 years. I had two girlfriends during high school (junior and senior years).
I graduated 4th in a class of 220 at Pacific High School with a 4.2 GPA. I was in all sorts of clubs like Key Club, Beta Club, and TREND. Several of my friends went with me to the University of Missouri - Rolla (now Missouri University of Science and Technology) for college. I lived in 4 dorm rooms, a 2-story house, and an efficiency apartment while in Rolla for school. Part of the way through, my mom moved us to Ballwin (aka "West County St. Louis"). I also only had two girlfriends during college and went on a couple dates with a few girls. I graduated Magna Cum Laude in May 2004 with a BS, Engineering Management and a Minor, Computer Science. I was in many organizations there - Phi Eta Sigma, Circle K, CESA, SUB, Newman, ODK, Tau Beta Pi, AID, EMH, Phi Kappa Phi, most of which I've been an officer in. I was a Resident Assistant for 1 1/2 years at Thomas Jefferson Residence Hall.
I had my first experience with a computer when I was about 8. Ahh, the good 'ol Commodore 64. How I did love those RUN and PRINT statements (and the game "Pecos Pete"). I was also well-versed with my aunt's Atari. In 5th grade we got IBM PC's at school, where I learned to type. In Jr. High, I used the Apple we had in my Odyssey (gifted) class for some projects and text-based games. My mom then bought a 286 PC. It even had 4 colors on the monitor! I started learning about files called "autoexec", and eventually tried to "tweak" the system so much that it stopped working. 2-3 years later, we bought a 486 with a 325 mb hard drive and 4 mb of RAM. It didn't have a math co-processor, but man was it smokin'. It was built to run Windows 3.11, but I managed to do my first big software job and installed Windows 95 and MSIE 4 on it (and later MS Office 97). I didn't kill it, but instead, I used it for all sorts of things: homework, solitaire, and, yes, one day, my first web page.
My first Internet experience was in 7th grade during Odyssey class. We were the first ones allowed to use this new machine. It had what they called "the net" attached to it. I'd heard about it and probably seen it, but had never been on it. The first website I went to was the website for the movie Tank Girl. I didn't use the Internet until about late '95 or early '96 when my sister got free Juno webmail from her college so we could talk to her without paying large phone bills. It was just a free dialup connection to check the Juno email account - but I eventually learned how to cheat the software and get to some websites while connected to it. We were on a 2400bps modem at the time though!. About that time, I started using free AOL/MSN Internet disks to browse websites. Before the Internet, I had connected to a few BBS's from home. A friend of mine's father worked for a data corporation and was able to setup a BBS (the "Dragon's Lair") just for our circle of friends to use. This was probably in the Junior High years.
I learned how to write HTML by going to www.webcrawler.com and viewing the source of their site, then going to www.msn.com to take their source as well. I started simple and modified some text I saw in the code that also appeared on the page. What do ya know - my name was now showing in the browser! From there, I combined the two pages to make my first webpage. Around '95, I put this first page up (on the free Xoom and Freeservers sites). We then got a Cyrix M2 Processor Compaq my senior year of High School. I didn't like it much, but about 1 year later, I bought my first PC - an HP Pavilion.
I was in a "hacker" mode for 3 years or so, where I played around gaining access to remote systems. I learned quite a bit by playing around with things. I began a website called www.digintrus.com (digi = digital; intrus = intruders in French). My hacker group was called DI. I attracted some interesting guys who either did nothing or attempted to help me a bit with the site. Some buds of ours in other hacking groups did some pretty notable stuff though. It happens that one of them was the guy who wrote the DOS attack software used by "mafiaboy," who crashed Yahoo, CNet, and Ebay. And of course, their website, that I helped them build, was soon featured on the Canadian national news.... Unfortunately, the page on their website with the video is now gone - but just as well. I have been haunted on a few rare occassions by some of those guys, probably as an attempt to disturb my entreprenuership.
I worked for a fireworks stand for a couple weeks when I was 14. For the next 3 summers, I worked for Baker's Ice Company in my hometown. They mostly kept me out on the delivery trucks, but my last year I worked in the plant a lot because I was older and they were fully moved into their new plant. The summer after that, I interned with MODOT as an inspector engineer - I was on the Hwy 44 and Hwy 50 bridge reconstruction project. I have some interesting photos of that (involving toilets on the highway and smashed fuel tankers)! Then for 2 summers (and winter breaks), I worked for a branch of a financial planning company interning, but as VP of R&D and Dir. of Tech. I did quite a few projects for them and learned a lot - because much of what I've done was new to me. This includes improving their paperflow process, improving forms, programming data/database converters to move between the contact/marketing management systems, maintaining PCs and their network, upgrading computer hardware and software, setting up a server/client environment, setting up remote computing abilities and web-based mail, converting paper forms to interactive computer forms, and many other tasks.
In 2003, I co-oped with Anheuser-Busch. I worked as a Resident Construction Engineer then as a Capital Projects Scheduler. I learned how to use Primavera and SAP with them. I was put in charge of managing a construction project on my own and creating a capital project's construction schedule that was used to get funding for the project. I also hung out a lot in downtown St. Louis while working there, which changed me quite a bit socially.
I started my first business in 2001. It's still just a hobby with occassional candy cash. Check it out at www.ximinc.com. I do web hosting, web design, and web scripting (whenever I have time). The business also supports the awesome Yet another Bulletin Board (YaBB) project, located at www.yabbforum.com.
I dabble in just about everything, including collecting, outdoor activities, Internet, programming, music, sports, and movies. I have a small stamp college, a coin collection, a matchbox car collection, and a rock/mineral/fossil collection. I've also kept a lot of my old toys like He-Man and Voltron. As far as outdoor stuff goes, I like to camp, hike, fish, rollerblade, run, bike, and swim mainly. I guess it makes sense that I got my Eagle Scout badge and was Chapter Chief in the Order of the Arrow.... It's nice to get away from my technology addiction and enjoy the fresh air - and they're fun/healthy besides! I ran track for a year (8th grade) but ran out of time after that. I was stagemaster all 4 years in
high school for our plays and musicals and had 2 walk-on rolls. I was in band for 7 1/2 years and played the clarinet. I gave that hobby up for something called college and a life though. As far as the programming languages I know (mostly self-taught), most of them are: Visual Basic, BASIC, C/C++, PHP, HTML, Perl, JS, Assembly, COBOL, mIRC Scripting and ASP. Pathetic, I know.
Now I'm in my first post-college "real" job with Ring Container Technologies in South Carolina. I started as a trainee but was promoted to Quality Manager (now Process Improvement Manager). I'm currently assisting other plants in our region with quality and food safety.
I got married to my smart, beautiful wife, Amanda, in May 2007. She happens to be a talented cook too. We got a dog shortly after and named her Princess Fiona.