David Ryder - Designer - Blog

Warning: VERY LONG POST!!!

A little history on how I got to UT. I got out of the Navy in 2004 and immediately started going to school for Computer Science. I got an awesome job working a saltwater fish room at a Petland in Fort Thomas, KY (my hometown). I posted my resume on Monster when I got out of the Navy – not really looking for anything (not many jobs related to my experience would work for a full-time student). Anyway two years (June 2006) later I got a call from Shane Campbell asking if I was interested in a job with a fairly new Alarm company servicing and installing alarms. I would make my own schedule, work from home, and they would fly me to Utah, get me a rental car and hotel, and train me for a week. I thought it was a scam. I did a phone interview (like a five minute interview) and the next day he said he wanted to use me.

It was pretty exciting but I didn’t really believe it was real until I got my flight and rental car info. So that’s how it started. I worked the Cincinnati area for 1.5 years and had a pretty great time doing it. It was very flexible and I caught on super fast. I was at the time with Haleigh and we started getting really sick of KY. REALLY SICK. The weather, people, and scenery were getting unbearable. So I talked to Shane and found out that a spot in Tampa doing the same thing just opened up so with very little hesitation I took it! Picked up and moved everything down to Tampa. The scenery was great but the beach and water was too hot in the summer and the people were the meanest I have ever encountered. It was my personal hell. I did as much as I could do outdoors but everyone in Tampa seemed to be overweigh and inactive – thus there were not a lot of outdoor activities besides boating. I did a lot of Kayaking but there wasn’t really much else to do without a boat.

Things were changing with APX (getting larger, more incorporated) and the flexibility with my schedule was being reduced every month. I could no longer go to school full-time and work full-time and I was about to start school so the time was going to come to decide between school and APX. Unfortunately I was going to choose school. Coincidentally around this time the POP servers (email) were taken down for security purposes. I sent a ticket into desktop support but they told me they were never up. So I did a little snopping and figured out the server settings for out Exchange servers and wrote up a How-To for the other techs that wanted to get email on their Outlook from home. I sent it to Shane and he forwarded it to Brett Teasdale. I got a response (semi-jokingly) asking if I wanted a job. I did another phone interview and this time I was really, really nervous. I knew it was an opportunity to start somewhere in my career path I was going to school for and to me it was much more fitting and appropriate. I mean I think in one of the questions I paused for like 10 seconds without a clue of what to say. I think I even heard Brett chuckle a little. I was told they would tell me either way in the next few days if they were interested.

THAT DAY I got a call back from Krysynt telling me I was in. I flipped the freak out. I just landed a job with the best company I could imagine working for doing approximately what I was going to school for. So about 3 weeks later I packed up my Nitro with a few essentials and started my fateful journey from Tampa to Provo. It was the happiest cross-country drive I’ve ever taken and as the temperature dropped my excitement inversely raised.

I very happily slept outside for two weeks (up Provo Canyon). This was in December so the average low up there was like 8*. I woke up at 6 every morning more alive than ever. Went to the gym (Throwdown), worked out, showered for work, and went to work. Went to the gym after work then back to my tent to call it a night. This adventure was supposed to last a month but a 2 snowstorms later and two tent collapses ended it a little prematurely. I woke up one morning and the volume of my tent was approximately half of what it was when I went to sleep. I was a little freaked out but discovered that it was just snow that was collapsing the walls of my three-season tent. I dug myself out and headed to work. Fast forward a few days: I came home (yes, it was my home) one night and all I saw was the apex of my tent sticking out of the snow. It was completely covered. I furiously dug the tent out again and when I opened the door everything was covered in frost. Not wanting to die (moisture + cold = g’bye), I broke everything down and slept my in my Nitro. Adventure over. Howerver, it was a wonderful adventure!!

And now, in Utah, I am surrounded by beauty and happiness. Love it.