User:Andrew Young

Hi, my name is Andrew Young (IPA pronunciation: ).

Introduction
I was born on November 26, 1980 in San Antonio, Texas. I have been interested in computers and computer programming for as long as I can remember. I wrote my first programs on an Atari 800XL and an IBM AT in BASIC. I went to Business Careers High School from 1995-1999. After that I moved to Austin, Texas in order to attend The University of Texas. However, I only took one class - Introduction to Philosophy - before taking an extended leave. I returned to school in 2004 to study Computer Science. I switched to Linguistics soon afterwards, specializing in Computational Linguistics. I graduated with a B.A. in Linguistics in August of 2009. I will graduate with a Masters of Software Engineering from California State University, Fullerton in 2012. After that I plan to enter Starr King School for the Ministry to pursue my MDiv.

Career
I generally consider myself a computer programmer as far as my career is concerned. I program mostly in Java, but I also program in Ruby, C#, Perl, Bash, and various other programming languages. I am a Sun Certified Professional and I hold the Programmer, Developer, and Web Component Developer certifications.

Some of the programming subjects which I am especially knowledgeable about include:
 * Internationalization
 * Unicode
 * Legacy character encodings, especially related to CJKV
 * XML processing
 * Enterprise application design, especially with J2EE
 * Object-oriented programming

I also work part time as the Youth and Young Adult Programming Coordinator at First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin. I plan to enter the UU ministry specializing in youth ministry sometime in the next 5-10 years.

Interests
I'm interested in the following topics, among others:
 * Computer programming
 * Linguistics, Historical linguistics, Computational linguistics
 * Esperanto, Constructed languages
 * Japanese language, Japanese history, and Anime
 * Historical reenactment, Society for Creative Anachronism
 * Dungeons & Dragons and other Role-playing games

Contact Me

 * Website: Vaelen.Org