All About Clowns Me
Some people work on llama farms, but I don’t. I like to fix problems. These days lots of problems can be solved with technology. User management, curriculum delivery, selling goods, order fulfillment, banking, communications, logistics, organizing information, all sorts of crazy stuff.
The problems I like to solve usually involve making your life easier through the use of technology. Probably some sort of a web site or desktop application. I’ve got lots of experience with this type of thing. I started with Java about 8 years ago, and have dabbled in Ruby for the past 2-3 years. I’ve even been known to dabble with PHP, PL/SQL, Perl, and Cold Fusion at some point in my very frightening past.
What sort of things have I done?
Well, let’s see here. I’ve written some articles for IBM, contributed one lousy source file to JBoss, co-founded a few companies, written code to process millions of dollars a day in financial transactions, worked for a couple of startups, and streamlined all sorts of disjointed build processes. I’ve worked as a consultant, an employee and a freelancer. I’ve worked both on-site and half way around the world from clients. I’ve led teams of developers, written web applications, desktop applications and back-end server applications. For the past 2-3 years I’ve mostly been doing independent consulting using Ruby and Rails, and playing with a few pet projects in Java.
Can I hire you?
Sure. I’d love to chat. Send me an email anytime.
Do you have a resume?
Yup. If you want it, email me. I’ve got reference letters, too.
Who are you, exactly?
I’m Daniel Wintschel. Who are you?
Where are you, exactly?
I live in Vancouver, in the Great White North (AKA: Canada).
Do you have any hobbies?
Yes. I love cooking. I also like kickboxing and mixed martial arts, but I haven’t trained in nearly three years. I used to play bass guitar (for about 5 years), and love music – one day when I have time I plan on picking up an acoustic guitar and making pretty sounds with it. I like taking photos.
What else?
I’m married, and my wife is great. Some might say she’s “the bomb”, and some might say “she’s really tall” (especially in Asia). We like to travel. A lot. We’ve been to New Zealand, Cambodia, Thailand, Macau, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, USA, Canada, Japan, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, Jordan, Israel, Italy, Vatican, Austria and Germany (If you include stop-overs, we can add Greece and Qatar!).
It’s been rumored that I drink a lot of coffee, and this is definitely the case. Eating out is also a favorite pastime, we tend to plan a lot of our vacations around where the great food is. I also like to read. I read a lot of books.
What are some of your favorite books?
In no particular order:
- Lord of The Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
- Mere Christianity – C.S. Lewis
- A Generous Orthodoxy – Brian D. McLaren
- A New Kind of Christian – Brian D. McLaren
- Joel On Software – Joel Spolsky
- Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card
- Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
- Life of Pi – Yann Martel
- The Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell
- Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents – Ellen Ullman
- The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
- Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts
- Three Cups of Tea – Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin