About the Author¶
See, I am Wonder Mike, and I'd like to say hello…, to the black, to the white, the red and the brown, the purple and ye-llow… ♪
— The Sugarhill Gang, "Rapper's Delight"
Based in Southern California, Mike G. Miller has worked, played, and performed various computer geekery for over 20 years (*cough*).
I first learned to program in BASIC on the Commodore 64, thanks to my forward-looking father who bought my sister and I one each for Christmas. Years later, took PC hardware repair and Mac desktop publishing courses (seemingly at random), and rediscovered how drawn I was to tinkering with the temperamental boxes. The school had to show me the door at 10pm most nights 😂 and a light-bulb went on over my head. Later while working, I nabbed an A.S. degree in Computer Science at Moorpark College, and also enjoyed Anthropology and Music courses among other things at Cal State Northridge.
Professionally, I started out in Systems Administration at Rockwell International, helping aerospace research scientists and engineers manage their PCs, Macs, UNIX workstations, Netware servers and networks. Even briefly got my hands on a VAX cluster and Cray supercomputer. Honestly, it was the “United Nations” of computers and learned a shit-ton there. Also cranked out my first web pages with SimpleText, Notepad and the NCSA Mosaic browser shortly after the birth of the web as a “webmaster.”
Next, moved on to Quality Assurance and Engineering, first at Symantec Corp. in an enterprise setting, then Yahoo!, Inc. in a “web scale” one, haha.
Finally realizing a love for the challenges of software development, I’ve worked as a software engineer and trainer on numerous interesting projects for clients on salaried and independent contracts. Notable projects include Visual Effects work for Walt Disney Corp. around Los Angeles, Weta Digital in New Zealand, and development of an uncountable number of custom Digital Billboard and multimedia projects for perennial client, Scala, Inc.
Most recently I’ve been helping upgrade the ETL back-end for congress.gov. A modernization project managed by the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
…the skills to pay the bills y'all… ♪
— Beastie Boys
Also love to travel and have visited thirty or so countries and Antarctica. Protip: I try to learn something by staying a while and taking a few language courses beforehand, rather than simply collecting miles, haha. Check out my very neglected blog at geekademy.com.
LLAP
Exit Stage Left…
“Far beyond this world I’ve known,
far beyond my time… ♪
What kind of world am I going to find?
Will it be real or just all in my mind
What am I, who am I, what will I be
Where am I going and what will I… see?”
—Kip Lennon, “Suspension”
␄