Who is this Guy?

My name is Markus Beamer. I was born in Tacoma Washington but was raised in Columbia South Carolina. I come from a family of 4 boys and 2 girls and thus am used to a very hectic environment. “Never a dull moment” is certainly the motto for our home growing up. That’s probably why 11 years ago I turned to technology for a career, “Never a dull moment” sums up its progress quite nicely.

During my college years, at the College of Charleston, my first exploration into technology was as a web developer for a software licensing firm. I started out typing HTML and Javascript into a simple notepad window. Through the years I touched upon CSS, Java, Visual Basic, PHP, mySQL, Photoshop, Access, Oracle and MS SQL Server in that exact order. However, I find it quite amusing that to this day when I want to write a bit of code I reach for my notepad application first…no matter the language. Needless to say, I found a love in technology. No matter how much I knew, I never was bored, as something new was but a day away. Change was always going to come.

Of course change can come when you grow the family. Currently my family is in Charlotte North Carolina. I am the lucky husband to one fine lady and the proud father of two rambunctious boys. I am happy to say that my household carries on the tradition of “Never a dull moment”. My oldest son is crazy for electronics and all things technical. My youngest son is definitely the outdoor, rough and tumble kinda fella. They both attract their fair share of friends and our house has become the “neighborhood” house. (much to my wife’s dismay!)

I currently work at Bank of America as a Business Process Consultant. When asked, I tell friends and family that my role is to help “leadership” make the best use of technology and in truth this is what I do. However the role affords me much more than that, I am at a crucial nexus where the needs, desires and ambitions of the business meet the calculations, formulas and algorithms of technology. It’s a great place to be and I don’t think I’ll change it for some time to come.

But...

At times one gets bored with the day to day. It is in those times that I turn to my hobby of game building. Like most hobbies it is silly yet fulfilling. I build small games that can be played in a browser; my specialty is to build them with JavaScript so they do not require any plug-ins or downloads to play. Sometimes the games are role based, sometimes they are card based, other times they are …different. I have been doing this since 1999. I laugh when I think of the number of games I have written and thrown by the wayside (at last count 24). But that is what a hobby is…a wasted time that allows the mind, body and soul to reset.

I hope that having learned a little more about me, you will reach out and shake my hand. I am always happy to meet new folks.