My name is Andrew.

I am a computer geek, a transportation planner/engineer, an amateur photographer, and someone that tends to talk a lot.

I have been using computers since I was 5 years old.  At the age of 7, I learned how to write BASIC programs on our Commodore 128.  Throughout my high school, I did two things well: computer classes and photography classes.

I finished high school and went into Pre-Architecture at UC.  After a year of intensive classes, I didn’t make it into Architecture, so I transferred into planning.  I graduated with a Bachelors of Urban Planning degree in 2002.  I looked for a job in Cincinnati for about a year before deciding that the current situation wasn’t working for me.  I expanded my job search and got into a position as a planner/GIS analyst for Tindale-Oliver & Associates, a small planning and engineering company in Florida.

I spent a little over 4.5 years at Tindale-Oliver before deciding to move on.  During my tenure there, I did several computer things – I was the one-man IT department – and several transportation things.  On the computer side, I maintained a domain, web presence, and an Exchange server.  I used both Windows and Linux.  On the transportation side, I did a lot of LOS analysis and long range planning, and I started to get into travel demand modeling and became one of the organization’s experts in using travel demand models.  During this time, I also went to the University of South Florida to get a Master of Civil Engineering degree.

After graduating from USF, I made the decision to leave Tindale-Oliver.  I didn’t feel I was being paid as well as what I deserved, and it ultimately stemmed from feeling appreciated by the people that didn’t seem to have any effect on my pay, but not enough by at least one person that had too much effect on my pay.  I ultimately moved on to OKI Regional Council of Governments.

Since being hired at OKI, I grew from a Senior Planner/Engineer to the Travel Modeling Department Manager.  My computer knowledge has been less about email servers and more about programming and using technology for productivity.

In the past 26 years, I have seen computer change from simple machines to replace typewriters and checkbooks and to machines that can control a house and perform extremely complex mathematical calculations.  I have seen cell phones go from virtually non-existent to the ability to have the Internet in my pocket.

I manage a model that takes 4-12 hours to run, and forecasts traffic and transit ridership for 11 counties in the states of Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana.

I have written countless web pages in several languages (or bits of languages), including ASP, JavaScript, VBScript, and PHP.  I have programmed in six major programming languages, BASIC, C++, Pascal, FORTRAN, Python, and Perl.  I have learned countless application scripting languages, including VBA (not a big stretch, there), TP+ (transportation modeling software), TranPlan, Flex, ActionScript, and even MaxScript (for 3D Studio Max 3).  I have written batch and shell scripts in VBScript, Bash, and DOS.