Hello,
My name is Christopher Roach, and this page is where I get to tell you all about myself and this blog and why I decided to start it.
To start off with, I'm a software engineer with Apple's Online Store. So, it's probably a good idea for me to just go ahead and state for the record now that this is my personal blog. The views expressed herein are mine alone and not those of my employer. Ok, so now that we've got that out of the way, what can I say about myself? Well, before coming to Apple, I spent four years in Florida's Space Coast working as an embedded software engineer for a government contractor where I mostly worked on classified defense projects. It was pretty interesting work, but unfortunately, no matter how interesting the project, Uncle Sam has a way of squeezing out any of the fun to be had, so I decided to pack up and move to the West Coast, and that's where I've been now for the last two years.
Now, on to my education. I'm not originally from a techie background. My first degrees were in Finance and Economics from West Virginia University. After spending three months in Washington DC discovering that I hated business, I packed up and moved back to WVU to start another bachelors in Computer Science. It didn't take me long before I had switched over to a Master's degree and before I also decided to switch schools as well. In the Fall of 2000, I packed up again and moved to Virginia where I earned my Master's in Computer Science at Virginia Tech. While working towards my Master's I was also working at a local web development company earning my wages as an ASP developer (yikes, that was before I discovered the Mac). While in Florida, I continued my education, taking a few classes here and there from Florida Tech and working on some research with one of my professors in swarm intelligence and I was actually able to get a couple of publications out of it. Now I am currently taking classes again at Stanford. I just finished one on iPhone development and another on data mining. Eventually, I plan on pursuing a Ph.D., hopefully sooner rather than later.
We've now come to point of this blog. Well, this is just a way for me to get my voice heard in the world. I love Computer Science, I love math (though I'm pretty sure it's an unrequited love), I love programming languages and AI research, and cool new tools, etc., etc. and this blog is a way for me to talk about all those things without alienating all of my friends and family through sheer boredom. Instead, I get to bore all of you with all of my constant blathering on what latest tech fetish I am currently nurturing.
So, if any or all of this sounds interesting to you, please come on in and stay a while. I hope you enjoy the site and all of my irrelevant ramblings herein.
Sincerely,
Christopher