About Michael Lehman
Michael Lehman
Emails:
Personal: machinegod@live.com
Work: michael.lehman@eds.com
Links:
My Tech Biography:
I'm a computer guy... I have all sorts of interests besides this of course, but if you were to pick one thing to say I do, it would be computers.
I started actively learning how to program when I was 12 with a version of basic on our PowerComputing Apple computer, and never stopped after that. Of course, my interest in computers had started much earlier than that, but that was the first time i really started being able to dive deeper..
Shortly there after I met my two best friends growing up, The Grimes Boys, and we poked our noses into everything we could from hame radio, skeet shooting, and to recompiling linux kernels at 3am (and all night thanks to the underwhelming speed of our computers) while hyped up on Mt. Dew.
The boys and I started a computer company when I turned 18 to do, well.. really any professional activies we could use computers for to make money. First we wanted to be an ISP (Steve actually managed to keep 4 or 5 customers for a number of years providing dialup and sharing a DSL line), then we thought about providing training, and we finally just ended up doing basic computer support. We made money, but it wasn't exactly rolling in, so we eventually moved on.
For some reason, I thought it be a great idea to get married in the middle of this (at 19yo), and jumped into that. Of course marriage, and the arrival of my children, threw my academic and professional plans out the window. Even though i was quite ill prepared for married life, it actually led to my first (well technically second) corporate job doing desktop support for a consulting company at Cooper Tire and Rubber in Findlay, OH.
From desktop support, I moved onto server support at Marathon Oil, and have been there ever since (always as a contractor).
Interests:
A bit of everything really.. my kids of course, music, photography, reading, and games of all types. I still love things like ham radio and rocketry, though i hardly spend any time on them the last few years.
I love the outdoors. I got to go backpacking for the first time in the Adirondaks in 2008. Talk about incredible.. of course it rained two thirds of the time, and I was exhausted, but the trip was incredible and I plan to really increase my activities around this.
I've been taking the kids car camping every year, and they've been enjoying it a lot as well. I'm looking forward to being able to enjoy some backpacking trips together when they're physically able to do it.
I also tried fly fishing for the first time in 2008 and really enjoyed it. Very relaxing sport... And when i figure out how to cast the stupid thing, I'm sure i'll enjoy it even more. I did, however, manage to catch some fish. So, I'm apparently doing something besides enjoying myself.
For tech, my focuse lately has been going lower and lower level (hence this site).
I'm working to increase my understanding of how computers really work. I've started working on learning assembly and improving my c/c++. I've been working through a book called "Assembly Language and Computer Architecture using c++ and Java" by Anthony J. Dos Reis. I'm sure i'll post about that by itself, so i won't go to far into that. Suffice it to say, it's been facinating being able to pull the electronics background together with the computer programming and really see how it all works (even if it's only a very basic but ever improving understanding).
I support windows officially in my job, but i end up doing a bit of everthing, from C# and ASP.NET development, down to storage. I like it that way. I think to many people get stuck with one product or technology and don't really understand what's going on, and it really makes them struggle as time goes on.
It's both a blessing and a curse that God made me so inquisitive. There's not much tech I'm not interested in, but never enough time to learn it all.
