Welcome visitor! I am Trent Raber and I am happy you have decided to take the time to learn a little more about me. I have spent 46 years on this third rock from the sun and have a plethora of experiences, some good some not so good, that I want to share with the rest of the world. Hopefully, some of you can take away something from the lessons I have learned and use my knowledge to help you in whichever endeavor you are about to embark on.
Who Am I Personally?
In a word, I’m a total nerd. I love everything nerdy in the world today and I am so excited about how so many of the things I loved as a kid are now in the mainstream. I feel fortunate that I get to see the rest of the world fall in love with things like Dungeons & Dragons, comic books, medieval fantasy, and video games which are things I have been passionate about my entire life. I spend most of my time reading, traveling, playing Warhammer 40K, painting miniatures, helping my wife grow her custom fabric company Nerdartistry, and now writing. There are so many wonderful things in this world and we must do our best to try and experience as many of them as possible in the relatively short time we have available. I make it a mission to try and soak up as much of it as I can and now I plan to share those experiences with you.
Who am I Professionally?
I started my career as a software engineer over 17 years ago by working with my best friend and mentor. I spent most of my career as a backend engineer with a focus on Ruby on Rails and PHP. Then about three years ago while working with RVshare, I decided it was time to make the move from writing code to helping facilitate the growth of younger engineers and take a more “big picture” view on software development by becoming an engineering manager. I currently am helping to build a high-performance team as an engineering manager over at Lawnstarter, a startup committed to making life easier for everyone by providing the best home services in your area all while helping to grow small businesses.
I wasn’t always on a path to work in the tech industry. I originally wanted to be a chef and had plans to attend the Culinary Institute of America. While preparing to make this journey, I had taken some time to experience some things in life that I wanted to do before I started down the path of building my career. I played bass in a band, traveled when I could, and was a DJ at a nightclub. During this time, I was introduced to the world of software development and got completely hooked. I found a passion and elegance in writing code that satisfied my desires to be creative and build things that make life better for everyone else in the world. The rest, as they say, is history.
Why Are You Here?
Enough about me, so let’s talk about what you can expect to get from my blog. What I’m looking to do here is to share lessons, thoughts, and opinions on everything I have experienced in my life. I know most blogs try to focus on one thing, but I have way too much to say about so many aspects of my life to only focus on only one of them. So you can expect to find content around technology, books, movies, television, gaming, politics, society, and just life in general. Hopefully, I can offer up some tasty morsels that everyone can enjoy and maybe even help some people along the way. I hope you enjoy your time here and if I’m lucky you will walk away with some answers to some of the questions you may have about this crazy existence we call life. Happy reading!