About Me

Hi, I'm Fasteroid!  Nice to meet you!

I'm a Computer Science graduate from Wilmington University.  I currently work for two companies (one officially, the other cuz they're best friends with the first) and perform a hybrid of programming and engineering work to the beat of my own drum.  I could not have asked for a more perfect profession—in fact sometimes I even get survivor's guilt from it!—why me? So few people get to do what they love for a living—and even those that do are often burdened by bureacracy.  I somehow am one of the lucky few that doesn't have either of these problems.  I wish I could share it somehow.

I began writing my first original lines of code early to mid 2014, in a little-known language called Expression 2 from the popular sandbox game Garry's Mod.  Expression 2 had a very steep learning curve to it at first due to its obscurity and narrow scope of applications, but by 2015 it had turned into a massive power trip for me.  While I'm not as active on Garry's Mod anymore, E2 is still my go-to whenever I need to test concepts in a 3D physics environment.  Maybe one of these days I'll learn a proper game engine like Unreal and finally replace it once and for all.

My most memorable adventures were had during Odyssey of the Mind, which is a collaborative problem-solving extracurricular for creative thinkers.  Each year, teams of 5-7 choose one of five long-term problems (which all involve some combination of acting and engineering), and are assigned an 8-minute 'spontaneous' problem the day of the performance.

With the help of my father as the team coach (who's just there to organize and keep us on track), and my wonderful teammates, we managed to be World Finalists four times in a row from 2016 to 2019, with a second place victory for Problem 2 Division III in 2019 (scores here).

Odyssey of the Mind taught me a lot—mainly that it usually isn't feasable for one person to work on everything.  Different people have different strengths and weaknesses, and if one person does everything, they're bound to hit a weakness eventually.  In contrast, with good teamwork and good skill coverage, due to the swiss cheese model, it is almost impossible to pick a challenge that truly defeats everyone on the team.

I really miss those days.  The team has been scattered across the country, everyone is busy with their own lives now, and it just generally feels impossible to keep in touch.

My other fondest memories came from my two Garry's Mod servers, E2 Beyond Infinity and Props Beyond Infinity.  One is a programming and scripting paradise with the occasional player or two, and the other is a prop hunt server that has yet to see itself at max players.

One of the coolest features of both these servers is the presence of a bidirectional Discord Relay I designed, which allows seamless two-way interaction between players on the Garry's Mod server and users in its Discord server.  This relay has proved to serve many practical applications, ranging from posting memes in the in-game chat to running commands remotely from up to 8,000 miles away.  It's not a unique idea by any means, but it's 100% my unique implementation.  It's old, but I'm still proud of it.

In 2021 or 2022 (I forget exactly when), I had acquired enough money via server donations to purchase a new dedicated machine for the server.  This machine runs Linux instead of Windows, and server performance has been significantly better ever since this change.  Most E2 scripts (which run serverside) run with half the CPU time they used to use. The server also tolerates the other crap we put it through a lot better now, such as spawning hundreds of physics entities in confined spaces.  It's mostly dead now, but it still occasionally sees new players, and I still do hang out on it with friends from time to time.  It also barely costs anything to run, so I don't plan on closing it any time soon.

That's the end of my TL;DR.
If I've piqued your interest at all, you should check out my technical skill tree and learn more about what I can do.  Perhaps I can be of use to you!