"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination." - Albert Einstein
MJ Bonanno
Computer Programmer - Tech Guru - Tattoo Artist
MJ Bonanno - Deverloper

Becoming a developer

I was fortunate growing up to have parents that appriciated technology as much as I did. As long as I was being constructive, they always supported me and my computer hobbies. Me and my dad used to go to the South Jersey Expo Center everytime a computer show was in town. I would load up on random parts and software CD's and then rush home to spend the next 2-3 weeks glued to my computer.

I was into all the big games back then; Diablo, Warcraft, & Quake. But I was never as into playing the games as much as I was into trying to reverse engineer them. I couldn't tell you how many times I had to re-install one because I broke it trying to make my own edits to the source code. Eventually I caught on though.

I think I wrote my first program in Visual FoxPro? Or maybe it was Visual basic? I was probably 12 or 13 at the time still using a 56K dialup modem, but once we upgraded to cable and I got my first real taste of the internet, I knew web programming was my calling. My friends and I would trade off pieces of source code like it was gold. Then we'd all compete to see who's webpage would get the most page visits. I think Eugene won with his South Park Backgrounds website.

When I was 16, I got hired by the largest paintball distributor in the world. I thought that was pretty cool. I started out just doing graphics for them, but eventually they let me develop a lot of their satelite urls. Around the same time I also got a 2nd job working for my high school building servers and networks, running cable, troubleshooting computers, and doing upgrades. Looking back, these were probably my two favorite places to work.

MJ Bonanno - Personal Server

My Server

The Host

Dell Power Edge R710

2 x 2.40GHz E5530 Quad Core

6 x 600GB 15k RPM Seagate Drives

108GB RAM

The SAN

Dell EqualLogic PS5000xv Series

16 x 300gb 15k RPM Seagate Drives

4.8TB Total Storage

The Environment

Windows Server 2012 Data Center 64-bit

Hyper-V

MJ Bonanno

Fun Stuff

Ubuntu - Linux
Arduino
Raspberry Pi
PHP
Maker Faire
JavaScript