User:Jwelcker

= Jason David Welcker =

In the beginning
Jason Welcker, son of David Welcker and Victoria Suplizio, was born during the summer of 1978 in a small town south of Boston, Massachusetts. He lived there until age five when he moved with his mother and sister to yet another small town on the east coast of Florida where he spent the rest of his childhood and adolescence. Growing up in Florida proved challenging in many ways, but he passed the time by learning the outdoors, buildings things, skateboarding, playing drums, and tinkering with any electronics that came to his disposal.

Born geek
An aptitude for computers was noticed even before the move to Florida. Around the age of 4, copying code line for line into a TI-99 console running a very early version of BASIC proved highly entertaining with the attached speech synthesizer dad had installed. Hours of fun were had making the computer say silly words, such as 'underpants'. Later he found the pre-internet world of dial-up bulletin board systems (BBSes) while visiting his father one summer and was immediately enraptured by the concept of multi-node systems. A few years later he built his own BBS on a dedicated line, and eventually participated in the building of an 8 line MajorBBS system that turned into a failed project after only a few months online (but over a year of time spent constructing). The means of the internet led to the destruction of the multi-node BBS in general. A historical account of BBSes is kept here where you will find reference to one of the projects mentioned above.

Got the beat down
Similarly at an early age (3—4) Jason showed an obvious interest in percussion. Surely annoying his parents to some extent he would setup pots, pans, and tupperware in the kitchen and make noise to his hearts content, banging away with whatever utensils were in reach. Later he was surely influenced by his Uncle Joe Cabral, who is a career musician and impressive drummer. During the first couple years in Florida, Joe lived in a spare room he rented from Jason's mother, and helped pique this interest and morph it from banging on pots/pans to actual drums. As fate may have had it, Jason's mom would end up marrying a drummer, who moved in and brought a drum set with him. Fuel to the fire.

In sixth grade Jason started formal music/band classes and began learning how to read music. All the way through high-school Jason progressed in the percussive arts playing in symphonic and marching bands and competing at state and national levels. In 1995 he traveled to a national competition in Tempe, Arizona and marched in the Fiesta bowl parade.

Current
Jason moved back to Massachusetts in 2003 where he has since worked at an enterprise internet company in various engineering roles. He spends most of his time geeking out on the interwebs, building networks, or making noise banging on drums in his studio space. When doing none of the above he finds happiness in spending time with his girlfriend Eva (Ona jest moja miłość), and the challenge of trying to learn her native langauge, Polish. He also has an amazing one-eyed pug named after the late Hunter Thompson, who provides the unconditional companionship you would expect from a defective creature and dog.

Various personal and public websites

 * http://www.deexm.com
 * http://www.jasonwelcker.com
 * http://www.zerocoolsolutions.com
 * http://jason-welcker.yelp.com
 * http://www.facebook.com/jwelcker
 * http://www.linkedin.com/in/jwelcker
 * http://www.jasonwelcker.com/407bbs