About Me

This is the personal website of me, Matthew Ekenstedt. This blog will be written mostly in the first person voice (like this page), and be about whatever I’m interested in. I’ll try to keep whatever I post useful or entertaining. If you’re interested in more information read on.

Professional Skills and Whatnot

I’m a software developer. I’ve worked on everything from custom FileMaker plugins to major dental practice management software. I’ve worked on teams large and small. I could expand on all of this, but I’d rather not have this looking like a resume. That being said, my most familiar languages are C#, Java, PHP, JavaScript, and pretty much anything in the C family. I’ve worked in dozens, the previous are just the most recent and familiar.

I’m hoping to demonstrate my non-development professional skills on this blog. They include things like crisis prioritization, time management, getting to the problem from complaints, planning, team management, and so on.

My Other Blog

I’ve started doing my more technical posts over on Not Final Code. Look there for posts on Javascript, Salesforce, and whatever other technical topics I dive into.

A Brief History on Matt

I was born in a small town in Wisconsin. I’d tell you where, but sometimes that’s one of those annoying required security questions, so I’ll keep it quiet for now. You’d think I could just write my own question, wouldn’t you? Anyways, I didn’t live there for more than a year before my family moved to Woodbury, MN. I spent something like 14 years there until my family moved back to that small town in Wisconsin. I finished up high school there, then packed off to college. I spent a year at Michigan Technological University, but that school wasn’t for me. Great school, it just didn’t mix well with me. Then I finished up college at UW-Stout. After that I got my job at Marshfield Clinic. After the clinic, I worked at GoBoiano rebuilding their blogging engine and building their social network. Now I work for CloudCraze on their B2B eCommerce software running on Salesforce.

You might find it boring that I’ve lived in the Midwest my entire life. That probably would have been true in decades prior, but thanks the Internet I’m pretty much as plugged in as anybody. I have a 100Mb down and 5Mb up personal Internet connection, we’re not totally disconnected up here 🙂 Due to that, I stay around because of my family. Some of you will understand that, some of you won’t.

Oh, and it’s not like I haven’t traveled.

What Interests Me

This section would have been fairly simple before I got on the Internet. Now there are far too many to count. That fact has probably limited my mastery of various hobbies and side skills, but that’s okay I think.

I like nerdy stuff.
I quite enjoy video games. I don’t get too deep into any particular game, I like to try out whatever is new or interesting. As much as I hate to admit it, I love achievements. Specifically the Xbox kind, with the communities that have sprung up around them. Steam achievements are neat, and PS3 trophies are there, but somehow Microsoft made me care about my GamerScore. Though in recent months/years that interest has been waning. These days I just want to play fun games.

Sci-Fi and Fantasy are sweet. I could list shows and movies, but you probably already know what they are. Just to get it out of the way, my favorite Trek is TNG. My knowledge on any of the Trek series are far from complete enough for me to be considered a Trekkie. Fantasy books are what got me reading seriously in my early years. I was reading the Star Wars expanded universe books in probably fourth grade. I’ve read meatier fantasy and sci-fi since then, but we can talk about those some other time.

Comics Intimidate me. I’ve never gotten into comics, but I’ve always wanted to. The problem is that staying current costs hundreds of dollars a month. So for now I’ll continue to be one of those people who appreciates comics from a distance.

However, Anime and Manga do not intimidate me. I’ve been deep into both since the 90’s. Don’t worry though, I won’t try to push them on you if you ask. Well, I mean, you should see at least the best of the classics, you know you could start with…

And, you know, all that other nerdy stuff. Technology, Math, Astrophysics, all that stuff. I’d love to talk about any of this stuff with you guys, but I’ll keep it to a minimum unless you start expressing interest.

I like personal development.

I keep trying to write a blog post here. So, I’ll just write some blog posts later. The basics of this are that I enjoy reading about and trying out personal development and productivity techniques. I’m sure you’ll know more if you read the posts I’ll be writing.

I like trying new things

This seems to get me in trouble and cost a lot of money.

I like to write

Even though my posts to this site are sparse and irregular, I do like to write. Often I’ll write short stories or work on one of the novels that I promise I’ll put on Amazon some day.

About this site:

I’ll be updating this page as things change, but for now I’m just running a WordPress blog on my shared hosted server. Should I actually start to see some traffic, I’ll probably truck this whole thing over to Amazon’s cloud stuff. I’ll cross that bridge if we get there. I’ve used drupal so many times I might switch back to that at some point. I’ll let you know if I do.

For now a users first comment needs to be approved once before you can comment without moderation. Depending on how bad the spam is, I might switch this to fully moderated comments or disable comments altogether. I don’t have the time right now to pay close attention to all comments all day. If the comment moderation bothers you, feel free to talk to me via Twitter instead.

Related sites:

Ads, Links, Cookies, and so on

I don’t like ads. I’m planning on keeping ads off the site, but I promise that if I ever have ads here they will be relevant and vetted. I won’t advertise things I don’t actually recommend. I’d rather keep this ad-free though. There is a bigger, more difficult discussion on the future of advertising and funding on the Internet, but without knowing and providing that next step, I don’t think I’m going to write that article.

Some product links will be affiliate links. However, absolutely no articles or recommendations will be made based on affiliate relationships. What does that mean? Simply, when I’m writing about something I might try to snag an affiliate link through Amazon or whatever. I will not get an affiliate offer then write an article so I can link to it.

Cookies are a part of the Internet. My site(s) will use cookies, which keep track of things like your login and other basic Internet things. These cookies do not track you or hurt your computer.

Bottom Matter

Nothing I write should be considered as legal, medical, or otherwise professional advice. All articles are, unless otherwise explicitly stated, the opinion of the author and should be taken as such. Neither I nor any other author have any responsibility for what you do or don’t do with the information provided on this site. All posts and images are copyright Matthew Ekenstedt, unless otherwise stated. All comments are the opinions of the comment author.