Technology

I bought my first domain name in the 1990s and I’ve been crafting websites since the days of blink tags and hit counters. Along with building hundreds of websites for clients, I’ve bootstrapped my own projects. One of those projects went from hobby to part-time job, to a full-time job, to an “I can’t possibly handle this alone any more” position. Not wanting to hire employees, I lead the site through acquisition and remained Editor and Project Manager. The acquisition positioned me very well.

I pride myself on projects built to last.

In 1999 I recognized the need to build myself a database to track student to teacher ratios at the ski school I was working at. While I wasn’t much more than a glorified snowboard coach I had experience with databases and developed the tool. Within a year the project had grown to also track employee contact and status information, employee training, and a payroll system based on complex calculations for various payment schemes. Given my limited knowledge of databases at the time (or so I thought) I build the system on the condition I would support it for one year. (I wasn’t employed as an I.T. Professional at the time.) After that– they need to buy a system or have a firm custom develop a fully supported system. Sixteen years later as I write this in 2015, seemingly an eternity in I.T., the system is still running… at multiple ski resorts. The system was given a few minimal updates along the way, but has largely gone untouched for the past decade.

Are there any computer programs on your computer that haven’t been updated in a decade?

A website started building in 2000, launched in 2001 is still running today with nearly zero changes to the layout nor code base. While there are a many signs of the past, (Comic Sans, anyone?) the site still serves the original purpose and goals of the client.