Documenting America one block at a time

I am happy where I work now but I thought it’d be fun to make a goofy application for a job at A9 traveling cities in the US taking pictures.

I am interested in the block view driver position. I find myself having to calm a down a bit as I write this because I have spent the last ten years of my life practicing for this job. As you weren’t there for the last ten years of my life, allow me to catch you up. I have done solo drives to every state, except Rhode Island. That includes a trip to Alaska to just a smidgen south of the Arctic Circle. I’ve driven and hiked through remote Bureau of Land Management areas or the dense streets of Boston. I have camped, slept in bus stations or stayed in hotels all across the country. Each night in a new place I would meticulously record my routes in personal journals and my thoughts about where I’d been. I’ve faced down snow storms with white-out conditions, tornados, flat tires, being locked out of my car, washed out roads all with nary a scratch on my car (quite a feat as one travels through the Yukon wilderness). While my passion for travel contiues to this day, particularly by car, I’ve made a map of the highlights of my travel between 1997 and 2002 at http://gnumatt.org/greencar.html. I’m familiar with digital cameras and GPS technology. I still remember the day I won my first GPS in a giveaway years ago. I immediately bought batteries and proceeded to run around in the parking lot measuring my speed and tracking my route with the GPS. While I’m no William Eggleston when it comes to documenting the colorful ephemera that drifts through my life, I continue to work on my photography skills and feel comfortable troubleshooting any digital camera problems. As far as my technical skills I started with an Amiga 1000 in 1986 and have built a career of sorts for myself around the Internet and in particular the web. As you can tell from my resume I’ve been working with the Internet since 1993. While I began doing Unix system administration and networking I’ve tried to focus more on backend development the last few years.I sincerely welcome the opportunity to discuss the block view driver six month contract position.