Ian Douglas:
CLASS OF 1985
Galena High SchoolClass of 1985
Pine point, NT
Bayridge Secondary SchoolClass of 1993
Kingston, ON
Frontenac Secondary SchoolClass of 1993
Kingston, ON
Matonabbee High SchoolClass of 1992
Pine point, NT
Bayridge Elementary SchoolClass of 1988
Kingston, ON
Ian's Story
Life
Started school in 1979 at Galena Elementary School in Pine Point, NWT. Moved from Pine Point to Kingston, Ontario in 1986 and started grade 7 at Bayridge Public School. Went on to Bayridge Secondary School from grade 9 through 11 and switched to Frontenac S.S. for grade 12 for my 1991-1992 school year. Went on to Loyalist College in Belleville in the fall of 1992, switched to St. Lawrence in Kingston in the fall of 1993 and graduated as a Computer Engineering Technologist after a 3-year diploma course in 1996. Moved to the Ottawa area in May/96 and worked as a software developer for 4 years. In summer 2000, I switched to Internet Development as a Computer Systems Analyst and moved to the Los Angeles area and not missing the snow one single bit. Always looking for old friends from school, so drop me a line!
The girl in the photo is Elizabeth, my lovely wife. Our wedding was September 17, 2005 here in Los Angeles. Almost a full year later, we haven't killed each other yet, so that's a good sign. We're both active bloggers, and she's the funniest person I read on the 'net.
School
I enjoyed school. Looking back, I wish I wasn't so shy. Or dorky. I don't think it was any big secret that I was a Christian, but should have shown it more I think. I'd do a lot of things differently if I could go back and change the past. I'd have probably tried to date more, be more social with my own peers instead of hanging out with older students all of the time. I was pretty active in the stage band and concert band at BSS playing trumpet or french horn, and loved playing at the coffee house events.
College
I started at Loyalist College in Belleville ON, taking Electronics Engineering Technology, but after my first year decided that electronics was more of a hobby interest than a career goal, so switched to Computer Engineering Technology at St Lawrence College in Kingston. There, I studied software development for 3 years and still got a little bit of electronics in the mix. I also took some business classes my first year at SLC. Our program at the time was classifi...Expand for more
ed as the second hardest course next to the nursing program, and of the 130+ that started in our first year, I believe only 24 of us made it to the final term and graduated.
While in college, I worked at the Kingston Center, at the Randy River store and then at Bootlegger. I've always liked interacting with people although I've never been much for sales.
Workplace
My goal with work is to be comfortable in the environment where I do my job, and to excel at everything I do.
Straight out of college, I worked at QNX in Ottawa to learn customer support skills and some Unix programming skills. I didn't feel challenged enough, so moved to a Newbridge affiliate called Telexis (now called March Networks) for 2.5 years doing firmware development, and some freelance Internet development. From there, I moved to Chrysalis-ITS (now called SafeNet) where I did some low-level programming (firmware) for a PCI card the company was developing. Once that contract was finished, I moved to sunny California to the Los Angeles area, to work for a company as a Computer Systems Analyst. My duties there were mostly system monitoring and security, software development, and lots of systems administration. I worked for them for 3.5 years and then was hired by a private university to do similar work but mostly database-driven work for a student registration system. After a year making sub-standard pay with no benefits, I left and went to work at PriceGrabber.com where I did even more CSA work - finding ways to eek out performance in other people's software and database queries. It was a fun challenge, but Los Angeles sucks for traffic, and spending about 90 minutes in each direction just getting to/from work started to suck, so in spring of 2006 I decided I had enough experience to be a FULL-time independent software developer, and have had the opportunity to work on some really great projects.
I also do freelance web development on the side for various clients. Drop me a note if you want the address for my personal or tech blogs and want to see some of the software I've written.
Register for Free to view all details!
Reunions
Register for Free to start a reunion event!
Photos
