~pperalta

So it appears that I was Blog Tagged by Mike Levin so I have to come up with 5 things about me that won’t completely bore the audience.

1. I am the first in my family to be born an American citizen. Everyone that came before me was born in the Dominican Republic.
2. Some cool stuff I did in high school: I wrote an award winning literary analysis for Richard Wright’s Native Son. By award winning I mean at the Volusia county school district level, not Nobel or Pulitzer level
   I also participated in the Florida High School Programming Competition as a high school junior at Deltona High. I was the only junior on the team; the rest of the guys were seniors and were light years ahead of me in ability. We came in third place in the state, not bad at all. We did not return to the state finals my senior year; we were beaten out by DeLand High by 1 point!
3. I’m a big fan of dancehall reggae and helped DJ many parties by the Caribbean Club at my alma matter Stetson University.
4. I have a fascination for urban rail mass transit, especially the New York subway system. My wife calls it a “near autistic” obsession. I also love maps and as a child would study any map that I could get my hands on. These two interests have given me an uncanny ability to describe, sometimes in excruciating detail, where every subway line goes, what color it is, etc. Looking at the subway maps for some of the other US cities that I’ve visited has given me an appreciation for how horribly complicated the NY system is and how intimidating it must be for those not familiar with it.
5. Some other careers I may have considered other than software development:
   • High School Teacher. I may actually consider doing this someday after this software gig is up and I can afford the drastic pay cut.
   • Lawyer or law enforcement. Watching way too many hours of Law & Order has made me a decent armchair lawyer. Working in a forensic computer lab would also be pretty cool.
   • Civil Engineer. Must be that fascination with maps.
   • When I was much younger I wanted to be a pilot or astronaut. Strangely enough my interest in flying and space shuttles peaked after the Challenger accident (when I was 9 years old.)

So now I’m supposed to tag five other people, but I doubt that my blog has that many readers other than the spam bots.

Tomorrow will be a bitter sweet day for me as it is my last at Symantec. I enjoyed 8 years at this company which was previously Seagate Software and Veritas. It was my first job out of college (I was an intern when hired, so I actually started before graduating.) I learned a tremendous amount from my coworkers (especially this one) and have many success stories as well as some amusing failures! So what will be my next move? Up north to Boston where I will be joining Tangosol and helping to support Coherence, their flagship product. It will be a new and interesting challenge and certainly one that I look forward to.