I'm a programmer, I write code.

That's the simple take on me.

I was born in Minnesota and moved to Arizona in 1987. Enduring middle & high school was done in the north Phoenix area. College brought me to Tucson nearly 10 years ago (to attend University of Arizona). I graduated in December of 2001 with a Bachelor's of Science in Computer Science.

For the last year, I have worked for the Tree of Life Web Project (http://tolweb.org/). I took over from Danny Mandel. The application is written in Java using open-source frameworks (the API stack being: Tapestry, Spring, and Hibernate). Along with the web project, I work on a few related projects. I use Ubuntu on daily basis at work (along with some administration of RedHat Enterprise servers).

Before taking the job as a Linux/Java developer I worked on the dark side of technology: Microsoft .NET/C#. I started working with C# in Beta 2 of .NET. I developed curriculum for and taught .NET courses for the Computer Science Department at University of Arizona from 2002 to 2006. While teaching, I also worked for a motor vehicle registration solution provider called Archon Technologies (which was purchased in 2006 by 3M) as a web and framework developer. (I have a LinkedIn profile with more details: http://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewlenards)

I revel in learning and messing with new programming languages. Currently, I'm messing with groovy and learning python. I've worked in C#, work in Java, and relish Icon (http://cs.arizona.edu/icon/).

Computing Geek Stuff:
    I'm an ACM (http://acm.org/) member.
    I'm a Tucson Java Users Group (http://tucson-jug.org/) member.
    I've attended OOPSLA (http://www.oopsla.org/) the last 8 years.
    I host Startup Drinks gatherings, with help from JMatt Peterson, in Tucson (http://tucson.startupdrinks.com/)
    I was one of the founders of UA's ACM Student Chapter (http://www.cs.arizona.edu/acm/)
    I've done talks and presentations for SIGCSE, TJUG, UA Student ACM, and UA's NetMgrs group

I'm working on a pet project for Tucson called Gigism (http://gigism.com/gigism/). I blog about my inability to deliver an alpha of Gigism here: http://gigism.blogspot.com/.

Outside of computing, I'm a rabid hockey. I love (American) football. I play any fantasy sport I can (sadly, and with some shame). I read old Green Lantern comics. Along with the works of Hunter S. Thompson, Douglas Coupland, Charles Bukowski, and others (http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/156223). I'm an avid gig-goer and take in as much live music as possible (I used to be a deejay for KAMP Radio [http://kamp.arizona.edu]). And I ride my bike to work and hike during the Arizona "winters."