varn.dev

TLDR: Front End Developer based in Tampa, FL 🌴 focusing mostly in Drupal, who loves the web, despite all its warts.

Born in Tampa, Florida and mostly raised in Tallahassee, I came to the web at an early age, back in 1995, on my dad's 486 PC. Back then, the web was a truly magical place where every time I went on, I would find more and more to explore and learn. And as I explored, I started feeling the urge to create as well and contribute and claim my own place on the web.

At the time, there was a local ISP next door to my dad's business that was looking to make their own site, and to fill it with content from local folks. One of the parts they wanted was video game reviews, and being 14 at the time I was the perfect person to contribute. My first job (and thus my first website) was in writing PC game reviews based on games the company would buy for me, with the first being Quake. I built "Adam's Game Reviews" back then in Notepad and published the pages directly there, on the server, in their office. Talk about a risky workflow!

Eventually I progressed from Notepad, to Netscape Navigator Gold to Hot Dog and even Microsoft Front Page as my skills grew, and I actually got paid to build websites. Flash forward a few years and I was working for a small start up, building sites in Cold Fusion (of all things) throughout college. I took a few years off from the web working in retail and customer support when I moved back to Tampa, but never stopped tinkering or having some sort of personal site and presence on the web.

I got back into professional web development in 2008, working with a former coworker to build sites in Drupal, and fell in love with it and the Drupal community. He and I worked together for a year before I took over his clients and started my own shop, Hot Sauce Design & Development. I became more active in the Drupal community, co-founding a local Meetup group and sponsoring and speaking at Florida DrupalCamp (where I eventually became a Camp organizer in 2021). That experience led me to Lullabot in 2021, where I currently working building higher education and state government sites as a Senior Front End Developer and still love learning, building and exploring things on the web.

On the personal side - this is an "About" page after all - I enjoy building things on the web (see above), spending time with my family and four cats (Elton John, Tina Turner, Blondie and Bisque) and watching movies, TV and football (both kinds). Drop me a line at adam at hsdev dot co (not .com) sometime, or find me on Mastodon if you're so inclined.

P.S. - If you haven't already, click on the ship in the header, then click again, for a little bit of fun.