The About Page

Hi, I'm Carl

If you're really interested in my background and what makes me get out of bed in the morning, this is the page for you. Keep reading for all sorts of not very interesting information. Or better yet, check out my blog for more interesting content.

My Job

I'm a software engineering manager at Bentley Systems, where I work with teams who are leading the company's new iTwin Platform division.

I started working here in 2011, right out of college, as an entry level software engineer. Over the years I've worked on desktop applications built in C# (.Net 2), mobile applications built in JavaScript, then TypeScript. In 2018 I started working on one of Bentley's first 100% cloud native applications.

Running

I was a pretty heavy smoker when I was younger. For almost 15 years I smoked over a pack a day. Even when I was in the Navy. In those days I didn't run one step further than I absolutely needed to, really just enough to scrape by my fitness tests (I was a proud member of the 3-mile-a-year club). And once I got out of the Navy, I stopped doing even that.

When I was 31, I decided that I'd had enough. One day I just put out a cigarette, thew out the rest of the pack, and quit cold turkey. I didn't really think it'd work (I'd tried the patch, gum, pills, you name it), but somehow this time it stuck. I completely stopped smoking and I haven't touched a cigarette in over ten years. What I didn't stop doing was eating. I ate everything, and I ate a lot of it. By the time I was 32, it had caught up to me.

In the spring of 2012, I had a wake up call when I realized that I was out of breath after putting on my socks. For some reason, I decided that I'd had enough (never mind that I was frequently sick, and even when I wasn't actually sick I didn't feel good). Somehow I'd let myself get to 248 pounds.

That was nearly 100 pounds more than when I was 22. I couldn't believe it. So I spent a few minutes researching the best app for beginning runners, and I quickly found a Couch25K app, downloaded that, and to my own surprise I actually stuck with it. Like everyone, at first I hated running, but by the time I made it to Week 5 (the make-or-break for a lot of people, it's the first time you run for 20 minutes straight) I was starting to enjoy myself.

What had started as a desperate attempt to save myself eventually became an essential part of my life. I finished the 5k program, then the 10k program, and by 2015 I was able to run a half-marathon without dying, even though that first half distance knocked me out for months. Today I run 6 days a week, year round (thanks to NordicTrack and iFit!), and I often run 14 or 15 miles on a Saturday morning, just for fun.

Guitar

I was really lucky that I grew up during the time that the best music ever made was regularly played on the radio. Classic rock was Led Zepplin and Pink Floyd, alternative was Nirvana and Pearl Jam, and hard rock and metal meant Metallica, Guns 'n Roses, and Megadeth.

So of course I wanted a guitar. When I was 14, my dad got me a really cheap Memphis strat copy. The action was impossibly high, it wouldn't stay in tune, and it shocked me when the whammy bar was connected, but I loved it. I played all the time, mostly teaching myself how to play Nirvana and Alice In Chains songs. I stuck with it through high school, but when I joined the Navy I had to leave that behind. It wasn't until my last year in that I bought a Takamine acoustic at a pawn shop in San Diego and I started playing again pretty regularly.