My journey to A* was an interesting one, indeed. I had been programming for about 4 years consistently. Upon graduating from high school, I started doing freelance web design work for a small Southern California based hosting and design company while going to school. It worked out well, and my passion for web design (and my skillset) grew stronger over the years.

After 2 years of programming I decided I wanted a different kind of challenge and moved myself, my 1984 Jeep, and most of my belongings to Salinas, California to be a youth pastor intern for several months. It was good experience, but I desperately missed programming, and looked for ways to fill the void. After the internship had ended I wanted to stay in the area a little longer, so I looked for opportunities to stay up there (not an easy task, as Salinas has been rated among the most expensive places in the US to live due to the ridiculous housing inflation.)

The opportunity I found to stay in the area was a…hmm…unique opportunity. I found a ranch that was looking for a caretaker to live there. Having been born in Texas, but raised in California (and having no real experience with anything the ranch lifestyle requires), I thought it would be a good way to reconnect with my roots, to do some “hands-on” work. I took the job and immediately moved in to apartment built into the side of the barn. I would get up every morning before the sun, feed the animals, and take care of whatever work needed to be done. It was good work, if not a little tiring.

The bad thing about ranch work is that there’s no money in it. You have to work VERY hard just to be able to break even, and I was spending $500/month on rent for a small one-bedroom furnished apartment in a barn and doing all of the ranch work for just $5/hour. That wasn’t going to pay the bills, so I hooked up with the company that I’d started freelancing for several years ago. Now I was ranching in the morning, trying to go to school in the afternoons, and freelancing in the evening. It was a hectic lifestyle.

After a few months of this, it was really time for a change. I’d started dating one of the ranch-owners daughters (David might remember her as “Candle Girl”, and the word “Crazy” is not too strong a term here) and the owner of the ranch was imposing weird rules and freaked out when I dented the ranch tractor (another blog post for another time). I saw all signs pointing to “RUN AWAY!”, so one dark night I began to look for job postings online.

I’d never done this before, so I wasn’t too sure what to look for, but I loaded up monster.com and began looking for programming jobs. Among the thousands and thousands of job postings, I found one that especially caught my eye. It was weird and sort of unclear, definitely different. It quoted Gandhi and talked about Google’s 20% personal project rule. I thought this was all very cool, so I worked all night on putting up an online portfolio and resumé posting, and sent my application off at 5am. By 9pm that evening, I had a response from the Company’s owner (El Jefe). We had some further rounds of e-mail, and then I was offered the job by 10pm. It all seemed so easy.

This was a sure sign that I was to leave, so I broke it off with Candle Girl, said my obligatory good byes, and got out. I drove down to Southern California a few days later, and after a weekend of settling back in, found the building and started work at A*.

Even given the crazy girlfriend, web designer turned youth pastor turned rancher, dented tractors, and angry ranch owners, I had no idea that the weirdest part of my story hadn’t even happened yet…