About

About Me

My name is Curtis Autery, and I write code. I avoid formal training, and have accumulated neither degrees nor certifications to do my work. I have only a high school diploma, and my ability to program is built largely upon self-study.

My current employer is American Electric Power, where I work as a software developer writing integration widgets. AEP is a large company that nevertheless has wonderful people in it. If I were content to settle down, I would stay with them until I retired. But adventure calls, and I'm antsy to find more exciting things to do. Somewhere out there a small company needs me and doesn't know it yet, or some day while planting shrubs in the backyard I'll discover the box of gold my house's previous owners buried, and use it to fund my dream company.

Until either of those things happens, however, I write integration widgets from 9 - 5, and explore the rest of the coding world whenever I can steal some downtime. After the kid is in bed, when my wife is doing homework, or sewing a new creation, or if I wake up at 6am on a Saturday and she still has four hours of sleep left in her. I explore and tinker, and work on recreational projects that I discuss here.

There are three special ladies in my life. My wife Liberty is, well, Batman. If Batman were a 100 pound woman who sewed and built things instead of fighting crime. She is studying Art History and Women's Studies at OSU, and habitually buys vintage items on Ebay and local thrift stores. I met her on the online dating site OKCupid in the fall of 2007, and we married on the first day of Spring in 2008. She has, among other things, cured me of the feeling that there aren't any people in the world who think like I do.

My daughter Anastasia, now in high school, saved me from being the bitter man I otherwise would have, by loving me in spite of myself. When she was three years old, her mother and I divorced, and I felt as though I had lost in life, and that I was done trying to contribute to the world. Her smile and insistence that I take her on adventures and let her explore the world was infectious. I spent years running her around to various activities and classes (cheerleading, ballet, singing, scouts, birthday parties with a slew of friends, sleepovers, take all the kids out to the movies or Cedar Point), and along the way learned how to be a good neighbor to my neighbors, to be an active volunteer at school, and to be an attentive parent to my princess. She's moved on in life to teenagery, and being daddy doesn't carry the punch it once did, but she kept me sane when life dealt me a bad blow, and I tried to be the best dad I could for her. Some of our adventures are in the Picasa albums to the right.

My stepdaughter Scout, now 6, has been in my life since slightly before she turned three. She has shown me that no two kids are the same, struggling with things that came easily to Anastasia, and being a natural at things Anastasia still has trouble with. She lets me see childhood again through a fresh set of eyes, when experience and age have tempered my fury and furious pace, and she is letting me see the delight of discovery again, when we practice reading and she figures out a new word and is excited, when she moves from scribbling, to making simple shapes, to combining shapes to make an object, to combining objects to make a story. Being a stepfather is hard, especially when dad is a good guy and they are clearly very fond of each other. I love little Scout, and she accepts me as a sort-of-dad, but I won't be her favorite man.

I am roughly 6'4" and 180 pounds. In 2006 I maxed out the scales at 260 pounds, and decided I didn't want to live that way any more. I watched my Calories, I exercised, and I joined a recreational soccer league for a couple years. This picture illustrates the magnitude of the change. I don't look like either of those guys anymore, though. I've got actual hair these days.

About "Medicine for the Sky"

The purpose of this blog is as an outlet for whatever strikes my fancy. Lately that has been recreational coding projects, with a few major events thrown in. If you go back in the archives, you'll see some of the romance of meeting Liberty and Scout for the first time, and even further back will show my parenting of an elementary school girl in all its helicopter glory.

Said girl, in fact, inspired the name for this blog, which you can read about here if you're interested in a sappy story.

Welcome.

Curtis Autery
ceautery@gmail.com