<commit_before>---
layout: page
title: History, Part 2
---
Wherein we continue the thrilling tale of my (non-superhero) origin story, thank you for reading.

[Previously.]({{baseurl}}/history)

## Entering the workforce
After college I obtained an engineering technician position at a silicon wafer chip fabrication plant in Austin. After being exposed to Lean manufacturing techniques, 5S Six Sigma methodology, Kaizen, as well as a whole bunch of gnarly chemicals working in the diffusion labs, the company faced the economic downturn of '08 by laying off a bunch of folk. 

I took a gig working as a web designer for an ad firm, designing and deploying commercial WordPress sites for small businesses in Florida and California. In retrospect the job would be better termed as a front end web developer as we were working on the LAMP stack. <commit_msg>Finish section edit<commit_after>---
layout: page
title: History, Part 2
---
Wherein we continue the thrilling tale of my (non-superhero) origin story, thank you for reading.

[Previously.]({{baseurl}}/history)

## Entering the workforce
After college I obtained an engineering technician position at a silicon wafer chip fabrication plant in Austin. After being exposed to Lean manufacturing techniques, 5S Six Sigma methodology, Kaizen, as well as a whole bunch of gnarly chemicals working in the diffusion labs, the company faced the economic downturn of '08 by laying off a bunch of folk. 

I took a gig working for an ad firm deploying commercial WordPress sites for small bilingual (English and Spanish-speaking) businesses in Florida and California. In retrospect the job title was front end or full stack web developer due to the job responsibilities which encompassed the LAMP stack. 

It was my first experience working remotely, being still located in Austin. In addition I was practicing what I later recognized as Agile development cycles and client-facing consulting. It took a bunch of back and forth with the business owners to iterate designs until they were satisfied.

These were genuinely fun times for me and my colleagues. We used Free Open Source Software, (free as in freedom, as they say), like GIMP for image manipulation, and scoured royalty-free stock photo sites for the perfect image of people laughing eating salad. I fondly remember when a customer asked if the animated GIF of a car expelling a cloud of smog would cost them extra for bandwidth. It was a simpler time. 

This experience helped me launch a (now-defunct) WordPress webcomic site using the popular ComicPress plugin. I taught myself how to create a mySQL database, server side scripting with PHP, FTP, web hosting, optimizing SEO and web publishing techniques in general. 

## Dark days
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