AROLTD Software Genesis
Efficient Software for a
New Age of Inefficient Software
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My name is Alec Roy Obradovich. I was born in 1996 on the thirteenth of June in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and I spent the entirety of my childhood growing up around Waukesha county. From a very young age I found myself interested in computing as I was often alone and didn't have much else to do to occupy my time. It wasn't very long after I began using computers that I became interested in the idea of programming, using the QBasic interpreter included with my parent's Windows 98 machine to begin my first steps into software development. After playing RuneScape and having my imagination set alight with ideas of what was possible, I set out to study Java; however, my tiny kid brain couldn't figure out how to write or compile Java because of its rigid object-oriented structure so I ended up learning C instead, which at this point I thought was the same language as C++. Many ridiculous programs were written and many lessons were learned from then on as I slammed my head onto the keyboard hoping that my nonsensical programs would work at least one-tenth of the time.
Over the following years I slowly got better at writing programs and learned several more languages (yes, including Java!) as my interest in the subject grew. I quickly learned that there was a demand for programmers in the area and in Milwaukee, and at the age of twelve years I began to sell my services to family and friends, and then eventually to companies and entrepreneurs. At fifteen I began doing automation and testing work at a firm in downtown Milwaukee that specialized in resource planning software, continuing there for three years total. Afterwards when I departed to Madison, Wisconsin for college I began work for a hopeful entrepreneur looking to make software to manage and requisition assets, though his ambitions quickly spiraled into so many varied and sundry fields that I was run ragged with his boundless ideas and was less than poorly compensated for my work. It was a time of poverty and I moved around often, but being young and inexperienced it was the exact crucible I needed to harden me into a proper man. As miserable as it often was, my youthful optimism and naivete kept me marching on even through the worst of it.
I departed from Madison back to my home county after arrangements with the entrepreneur fell through. I had dropped out of college long before that, but my skills were so sought after at this point that I hardly cared. The entrepreneur owed me quite a bit in arrears, and through a lengthy process of extortion negotiation I was compensated for the unpaid time. I placed that money onto a down payment for a mortgage on a house in Lannon which I was fortunately qualified for at this point having built credit renting for several years prior. Before the sale was closed I landed a job doing programming and general IT at a metal stamping factory running an ancient IBM mainframe. It was here that I became interested in mainframe programming and maintenance, as well as writing in or translating to machine code for industrial equipment. While working for this company I met another entrepreneur that did resource planning consulting for other factories and for a time we teamed up and really made a name for ourselves in the Waukesha and Milwaukee area.
After a few years I grew very discontented with my living situation, and for many philosophical and practical reasons ended up selling my house, leaving the computer programming industry, and moving to northern Wisconsin with my best friend. We had purchased a plot of land together there the year prior and we had ambitions of developing it into a small farm where we could raise livestock and grow crops. As of this writing that's where I am now, and that's where I plan to spend the rest of my days if everything goes well. The specific reasons and details of this are outside of the intended scope of this website, but if you're interested in reading about those things in more detail I have a thread on my friend's forum where I've been documenting things for years now.
The land was raw when we came here so there was an incredible amount of work to be done in order to establish ourselves here, and as a result I didn't really think much about computers or programming in that time. Occassionally over the long winters I would entertain a project to pass the time, but there was still plenty of studying and reckoning to do as well as upkeep that I couldn't properly allocate time towards any sort of serious development; however, as we've refined more of our processes I've managed to free up more of my time in the winter. While I do enjoy studying other things as well as those things that pertain to my current summertime pursuits, I just can't depart from my first love with a clear conscience, especially after everything I've seen and learned over those many years. Whether I like it or not, computer programming is a very large aspect of me as a person and it would be a shame if I simply shelved it while I pursued my other life goals.
So that's why I decided to bring my personal website back and tend to it in the winter months while things on the land are slow. I don't have mains electricity to my cabin and I dislike running a generator so running a proper computer or laptop is a bit of a nonstarter for me, however I recently acquired an old 8" Android tablet from work that I use with my phone's hotspot to SSH into a VPS and plan to continue my development there. Behold my battlestation, ye mighty, and despair:
Outside of programming I enjoy gardening and raising livestock, as you might have already guessed. Really I enjoy just about anything out of doors, be it hiking, canoeing, fishing, hunting, trapping, logging, collecting maple sap for syrup, roaming around for wild mushrooms, identifying wild plants, or just laying against a tree thinking. I also very much enjoy carpentry and am looking to improve at finer woodworking and other useful skills in construction. Through osmosis I've learned a lot about engines and have gotten decent at repairing them, especially small engines. My best friend got me into shooting and archery and over the years I'm slowly becoming a better marksman in both disciplines. I'm a big fan of opera and love seeing them in person, though I very rarely get the opportunity. Unsurprisingly I'm very passionate about singing as well, and I lend my voice to several churches on Sundays. Occasionally I enjoy an anime or two but please don't tell anyone I told you that.