This page includes information on who we are (Steve Fredette, Jackie Patti, Frankie Tippett, and other geeks), what we do and nice stuff people say about us.
Steve was first exposed to programming as a teenager when a friend's parent came home unexpectedly early and he hid in a closet to avoid detection with nothing to do but read a programming book.
Hiding was unsuccessful in that his friend could not smuggle him out of the house without parental detection and therefore had to confess, but the geek spark was lit that day and Steve began reading everything he could about programming from library books.
In 1982, Steve bought his first computer. Today, he says his first good computer was the TRS80 color computer, which he remembers fondly. Ironically, this computer now lives in his closet.
The next decade consisted of solitary computer adventures. Steve rewrote the operating system using assembly language. He created graphic and printing programs, played with fractals and 3-d modeling.
In 1992, Steve set up his first BBS and began connecting with other geeks. He wrote utility programs for BBS's and released shareware programs. He connected with the local Fidonet group and served as the mail hub and network coordinator.
In 2000, Steve took meeting geeks online to a new level when he met Jackie Patti on IRC, later marrying her.
As one of the few who "got" computers, Steve easily found part-time work as computers became more mainstream. He recommended purchases to small businesses, installed hardware and laid cable, installed software and did troubleshooting of the whole lot.
Steve began developing web sites in 1996.
He got hooked on Linux in 1997, becoming a Redhat enthusiast who later migrated to Fedora. Somewhere, there was a bit of Debian along the way.
Steve does web site development on the IIS/ASP and Apache/PHP platforms, coding in JavaScript, VBScript, Perl, C++ and VBScript. He also does database-integrated web sites, and is familiar with using both SQL Server and MySQL backends.
Steve speaks geek fluently, but unfortunately cannot speak non-geek well, so is not often allowed to speak to customers.
Steve also has a class A CDL with Hazmat, Tanker and Doubles endorsements and has won an awards for one-year safe driving of a tractor-trailer. He has also done tech support over the phone while driving the truck, but not professionally.
Jackie was always afraid of computers, thinking them too difficult. So she became a biochemist instead. Unfortunately, in her senior year of college, computers were forced upon her anyway. She learned how useful a word processor could be to a lousy typist, discovered how useful searching the chemical literature was via CAS online, and did molecular modeling projects. This early introduction influences her today as she is still a lousy typist and uses her computer primarily to search out useful information and for complex maths.
Jackie's first computer was an IBM PS2, which she received as a graduation gift from her grandmother for use in graduate school. She chose this computer because she knew nothing about computers except that being "IBM-compatible" seemed to be a selling point never realizing she was getting a non-IBM-compatible machine produced by IBM!
Her intention was to use the computer to write her research proposal, but along the way she began discovering things. Like Tetris, which took up many more hours than her proposal ever did.
Someone gave Jackie a 2400 baud modem with no documentation. After several weeks of changing toggles, rebooting and trying to make a connection, she finally made her first call to a BBS. Thus began her transformation from nerd to geek.
Years of BBSing introduced Jackie to the geek community whom provided many computer experiences, such as how to do maintenance (scan disk, defrag and backups) as well as how to lose your entire hard drive to Stacker.
She met some geeks who ran an unusual BBS called "Unix" and thus discovered Usenet and IRC very early on.
Meanwhile, she had left graduate school for the world of the employed, discovering that no one at her new job knew how to use their computers. She began writing VBA macros for Word and Excel and trained her peers in how to use them. When a database application was needed, she volunteered to complete it, learning normalization on the first version of Access.
Meanwhile, at home she was learning HTML for fun. She hosted sites on Apache servers and learned to chmod other people's scripts.
Jackie began a small business designing one-off database applications and small brochure websites. Then she got a job as webmaster to a software reseller.
As it was a Microsoft shop, Jackie learned classic ASP pretty much the day it was deployed by Microsoft. She moved from writing web pages into writing full blown database-driven applications. And she began teaching users how to use various WYSWYIG tools to create intranet pages.
A few years after that, she became a senior systems analyst to a large corporate headquarters in Delaware where she learned a deep dislike for Dilbertian companies.
Jackie does graphical design and web site development on the IIS/ASP platform, coding in JavaScript and VBScript. She also does database-integrated web sites, usually with SQL Server, but has also designed with Oracle and MySQL databases.
Jackie is an excellent communicator and teacher and thus is the designated Speaker-To-Customers.
She also has a class A CDL with Hazmat, Tanker and Doubles endorsements.
Frankie is a Houston-based artist whose drawings, paintings and photography we have known and admired for years.
Frankie began designing for the web when she was 13, from a desire to express herself in a manner different than all the typical personal web sites. Her site became an outlet for creativity of all sorts.
Frankie's first professional gig was for St. Louis' University chemistry club. Since then, she has designed both personal and professional sites, including sites for nonprofits, models and some adult sites.
Some of Frankie's demos can be viewed on our design page. Much more of her work, including photography, drawings and a portfolio of site designs can be viewed at http://www.frankiesphotos.com.
We've been doing this a long time and therefore know a lot of other geeks we use for projects: graphic designers, system administrators, network engineers, database engineers, etc. If we can't do it ourselves, we know the best people who can!
more about our ornery support staff
At our home office located near Carlisle, PA, we have a Fedora server/firewall, a W2K3 server, 3 desktops running different versions of Windows, laptops and various peripherals. We connect to the Internet via a DSL connection.
We mostly do IIS/ASP/SQL web sites. We are experienced developing sites for nonprofits, businesses and individuals.
"They are very responsive and conscientious about their work. They take pride in getting the job done and are very professional. I highly recommend them for their software development and database skills."
"I am a 55 years old teacher who is color challenged. When looking for a web person, I could not get anyone to understand that when a background is light colored and the writing is light, I cannot read anything. Jackie tuned right in to my needs and designed my site using red, black and white. This fit both my personality and my needs. Quick, honest, and smart--that's Jackie."
"We won second place in United Way of Pennsylvania's 2004/2005 Communications Contest for best online communications."
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