i’m a dude recently (about may of 2004) moved to the pacific northwest from the midwest. i have a wife, some kids, have been overwhelmed by Christ since the middle of my teenage years.

Professionally, i currently do software work for a Fortune 500 national retailer, doing extremely interesting software work.

Off the clock, I write software, take pictures, and I run a record label with two other good friends. Personally I have two mixtape/promo releases on Uprok Records (or Uprok/EMI when any of the artists there want to sound big), and have put out a 12″ vinyl with my crew the Wax Musim, and an independent instrumental/chill/breakbeat release that’s available on CDBaby, that was well-received by anyone receiving it — anywhere between “it’s not bad” to “i love it!” I’ve done tracks for folk and some remixes here and there, but mainly just enjoy the music, and contribute when i can. I’ve been involved in hip hop since my big bro brought home our first scratching turntable back around 1985. I consider myself a beat blender, with some skills in scratching, but first and foremost i appreciate and strive for a tight and creative beat blend. give me something of any rhythm, and turntables with some wide pitch, and i’ll get it blended for you. About two years ago I laid down my Technics 1200′s for the most part in favor of the Pioneer CDJ-1000′s (i received them as partial payment on one of the above Uprok mixtape releases), although on request, the vinyl gets lugged to sets, no doubt. I own an MPC 2000, a gang of vinyl, and the turntables (analog and digital). I haven’t made a beat in years, though.

This is a personal blog, put together by myself. I’m a software developer by trade, but i like to believe that i have a slight bit of design tendencies. At the very least, i know what pleases my eye, and have a "thing" about visual organization. The content of this site has a purpose to myself–to chronicle thoughts on anything, but mainly focusing on Yahweh, Hip Hop, Family, Software, and sometimes connecting the dots between them. I’ve several other sites, including accounts on some social networking joints.

Although I had a "home page" in 1994 & 95 (before all these “normal” people started getting on the Internet:), during college at iupui, the following is the earliest personal web page I
can find on record, thanks to the wayback machine. The Wayback Machine is apparently flakey; from time to time, you won’t be able to view that page.
Apologies in advance if you google my name and see some stuff in the past reflecting on how much of a smart aleck i’ve been. (You mean they were archiving these mailing lists for all time?)

I find it terribly difficult to carve out the time to write about myself. I’d rather just sit down in person and let it come out as it does. However, i’ve been working on a list of 25 things about me, for a few months, and here are
15 that i’ve come up with so far, with the rest to be completed at some point. Bless you if you make it past 5.

1. its spelled “jon”, no h. don’t forget it (although i know you will)
2. i was born with a caul over my face.
3. i drank mop & glow as a child, and had my stomach pumped.
4. speaking of stomach. i haven’t always been this fat. i grew up that way, however. when i left home however, i lifted religously for about 2 years (lost 80lbs & over 15% body fat), and ate primarily broiled chicken, tuna and salads.
5. i have been djing since 1985. my brother andrew bought a turntable and it was on from then.
6. i recognized the need for Yahweh’s guidance for my life during my high school years, and was then baptized into the church.
7. i am a nail/finger biter.
8. rumour has it that someone wanted to name me Yahweh. Thank Him it didn’t happen.
9. back home, everyone calls me “Marc”, to the confusion of many who follow me there.
10. i considered my life as good as complete, when my old group was able to release a 12″ vinyl. about everything else happening is icing on the cake.
11. i began “blogging” in about 1999 when i wrote some php scripts with a simple database backend, for our quasi-music group site, beats.com (the domain name of which i’ve since sold).
12. i’ve often held that the last song i want to hear before i die is a “classic” (Tamla era) Stevie Wonder song.
13. after taking a practice test, i scored high enough to take the official Mensa test, by the skin of my teeth (i believe 94 or 96 percentile) but ultimately didn’t make it on the real test. They don’t release results on the real test, so i’ll never know how bad i really did.
14. i consider the above the story of my life–pretty dang smart, but always just not smart enough. it had always plauged me (and still crops up), but i remind myself how thankful i am that it does not matter one bit in life.
15. i always have teetered the line between being the smart guy and the homeboy. in high school, many thought i’d flunked out because all my “crew” had graduated and had not. they were 1 year older than (and of course ahead of) me.

About the blog

Like many folk, this blog was started when i was on hiatus from work sometime in 2003. I started it to make my personal homepage (which has existed in some form for years) more dynamic. By the time i got back to looking at how to do this, there seemed to have been software all over the place to make this easier, as opposed to my hacked up solution. The software I originally settled on was Movable Type, which i used until they started charging for their software.

Historically, the first “blog” i started back in 99-2000 (from what i remember, they didn’t call them blogs then?)–it was a web diary for our “crew”, the software was custom software i wrote, even with a little backend that you can type in and the new pages would magically appear, timestamped.