About Meek
Meek is a software architect who finds writing about himself challenging but is always amazed at the journey that brought him here. He finds his voice in helping others understand software and is passionate about explaining things.
Early Inspiration
Meek originally wanted to be an astronaut after watching Apollo 13 but life had other plans. Computers first became a hobby after seeing pictures from the Pathfinder Mars mission at his local public library on an Apple Macintosh Color Classic in 1998. As he approached his senior year of high school, he took an AP Computer Science class where he learned Java. This solidified his passion into a potential career but Meek remained confused on how to get there.
Education
In his senior year, with no family who went to college before, he applied to two competitive universities with terrible SAT scores. Meek estimates he got more points for putting his name on the test than the actual test. He was promptly not admitted to either school and scrambled to find a university. Luckily for Meek, Southern Polytechnic State University aka Kennesaw State University - Marietta Campus still allowed admissions and were okay with his terrible SAT scores.
Professional Journey
During his undergrad, Meek would work the IT Helpdesk at King & Spalding where he would answer phones and dread patch Tuesdays that would take down the Exchange Servers during business hours. He would graduate with a degree in Computer Science from Southern Polytechnic State University and move to working QA at Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). GTRI would go on to pay for Meek to get a Masters Degree in Computer Science where he would meet his wife, Melonie (the best thing about his Masters program).
Upon graduation from his masters, he would go onto to work for AT&T, writing network provisioning software. He would move on to working at The Home Depot, developing a common sales tax API that used by homedepot.com along with other internal clients within The Home Depot while leading the development team.
Current Work
He currently works for Hylaine as a Principal Software Consultant where his 17 years of experience of working just about every position possible in the software development lifecycle serves as his guide for providing great software and phenomenal service. His top accomplishments with Hylaine are: developing a custom single page application to handle Occupational Safety checklist process for a speciality chemicals client, developing a custom Azure DevOps process along with pipelines for a pharmaceutical client, and leading a team of developers to integration systems using the Mulesoft platform for an industrial plumbing/piping client.
Personal Life
He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with his wife Melonie and their two cats, Deacon and Rayna.
Outside of computers, hobbies and interests include running, reading (especially aviation disasters, I love understanding why systems/processes fail), traveling and finding great food/drink spots wherever he goes.
This bio is written in the third person based on the bio I saw for Jorge Castro so I can re-use like they do. Apologies to Jorge for stealing but hopefully I gave proper credit.