jekor

Thanks to everyone who made the past year awesome.

It's hard to imagine that deviantART is only 8 years old. It feels like a lifetime ago when I was trawling v1 of the site for tile/sprite artists.

dA's birthday also roughly marks the 1 year anniversary of my joining staff. In that time I've learned a lot from everyone:

Most of all, I've learned what art really is from so many of you in the dA community. Because of you I had the confidence to try photography (and some of you *cough*actonephotos*cough* have kept me from stopping).

was my first friend and roommate in the company. Luckily, we both enjoy electronic and trance music, because we had it playing non-stop for the first few months. He demonstrated to me (indirectly) how much I didn't know about networking and Linux.

showed me that sometimes a quick and dirty solution has hidden elegance and simplicity. Oh, and MySQL kung fu. Oh, and Rock Band!

helped me realize that premature generalization can be just as harmful as premature optimization (specialization). I've also learned some non-tech goodies from various tangential conversations.

has forced me to explore the weaknesses in my technologies of choice and look at alternatives I wouldn't normally have considered. Oh yeh, and he's been a good example of how to code like a machine.

assured me in the beginning that deviantART as a company values beauty in its code just as much as on the site. Without him, I may not have joined.

has shown me that you can excel at more than 1 thing.

convinced me that not all Vim users are evil, just misguided.

revealed to me the secret of naming variables.

quietly taught me humility.

made me realize that I'm not alone in entertaining crazy conspiracy theories.

helped me get up to speed with the community and demonstrated the most efficient way to handle 2^n-1 communication paths.

has left me with memories of patient, polite, and yet effective persistence.

I'm indebted to who sought me out for this most righteous position.

took a chance on bringing me in, knowing beforehand that I was more academic and less pragmatic than he prefers.

Thanks to everyone else who has helped me along the way. It's been a real trip. I can't wait to see what I learn from everyone next year!