Devan Penner-Woelk
June 26, 1989
St. Catharines, ON, Canada
E-Mail:
tycoonmaster@gmail.comFacebook:
https://www.facebook.com/devanpwTwitter:
https://twitter.com/tranzium/I was born and raised until three years old in Niagara Falls, before my parents moved to St. Catharines where they still reside today and my earliest childhood memories begin. I remember playing outside, although many years ago, with children from not only my own complex, but the other three complexes in the surrounding area. Good times. Bad times. Many enjoyable memories that are amazingly not pushed out by my years of computer knowledge. Five years old is where my life began; a hand-me-down computer and an internet CD.
My computer life started when I was given a 100Mhz computer from an uncle and a Free Web internet CD (it was a service that provided free internet for displaying advertisements across the top of your computer). These early days were filled with a lot of headaches (thanks Mom and Dad; we visited the computer repair shop every day for a week straight once) but the deep seeded roots that is my computer hardware experience had begun. Although I can't perfectly lay out a timeline of what happened between school, friends, wanting to kill AOL, and computer troubles I had yet to face, but somewhere around the age of ten, I learned about a website called
http://derelictstudios.net/ (amazingly it is still up but seems to be left on the curb) and stuck my foot into the world of 3D Studio Max.
Gaming was a bit more exciting back than, from a developer standpoint, as anyone with notepad and/or a hex editor could modify a game's files to provide patches, add custom game-play, new graphics, characters, etc. Red Alert and Red Alert 2 were the main focus of the Derelict Studio forums and I was eventually a part of a team that had me designing and creating 3D models for buildings and vehicles (infantry was left to the older, more experienced modelers). Over time, I created and rendered wallpapers; little movies; building construction, operation, and destruction animations; messed around with this and that (for some reason four omnidirectional lights placed evenly in the four corners of the dimensional space created nice lighting). One day, with my own game's concept in full swing and building animations being rendered to disk, it was time to show off my work; my first website.
I still remember using a black hash-tooth pattern for the headings of the navigation, it was a dark coloured website, but aside from that, it's all a blur. A DOCTYPE you could never remember, tables, neopets, Geocities, GIF background images, and KaZaa were all the rage. The internet was starting to gain speed and I was right along with it. Creating webpages for this, learning more HTML/CSS for that, I lose all concept of time from the age of ten onward. Grade 6 was in there, where I drew Pokemon for the majority of my time and played Gizmo's and Gadgets on the thunder-of-Thor keyboards (buttons had to have 2 inch springs under them); secondary school, and then there was high school. A four-year-long-story short, we had programming classes for Grades 11 and 12 (Turing) in which I taught the class because 1) the teacher was often busy with other priorities and 2) with already eight years of coding behind me, another language (especially one with top-to-bottom reading, could go into functions barely) was nothing for me to learn. Being able to prioritize when each hand requested my help was exciting, not to mention often leaving the classroom realizing I didn't even turn on my monitor.
The summer of Grade 11, I went to work in a factory. The factory my dad still slaves away in. I do not remember that summer. I saved my money and barely had enough energy or care to do anything on the weekends. Before long, it was time to get back to school. However, being the computer code monkey that I am, the money I saved ($2040 CAD or $1780 USD; still to this day carry the receipt in my wallet - September 19th, 2006) turned into a money order and was mailed off to Chris H. in California. The money I just saved for three months, was now on its way to someone I have never met, had only sent a few e-mails too, to build me a server. Everyone: parents, friends, teachers included, all gave me lectures on how: I was stupid, will never see that money again, who the hell is this Chris fellow? But I am nearly crying right now remembering the day I stayed home from school to await the arrival of my very own server.
https://www.facebook.com/devanpw/media_set?set=a.5887235369.13287.536480369&type=3 (before it was packaged and sent to me)
Going off to college got me excited because I enrolled in the Computer Programming/Analyst course to expand my coding knowledge into the software side of things. I was already so vastly involved in the World Wide Web that I thought it impossible for anyone to teach me anything I didn't already know. In all honestly, to make another three-year-long-story short, the course itself was a complete waste of time. On the positive, I highly encourage everyone to at least try to go to college. The people, connections, excitement, life experiences, you name it over the three years I attended, were priceless. However, the knowledge they were suppose to cover was non-existent. I did not graduate from college. I did not learn how to create software. I did, however, further strengthen my website abilities by switching from tables to divs (yeah yeah).
One of the people I met in college quickly became my friend and business parnter, and together we started using our abilities to create websites. We tried the client route; didn't wok. We tried to create our own website and at one point had it ranked < 100,000 on Alexa (website no longer exists; big corporations killed it); didn't work. We both quit our jobs. We both have families. We are both living with our in-laws and are trying to make ends meet. Solely driven by our passion for the internet and have finally found our home in the crypto-currency world.
Starting out with faucets, building a faucet looping website (
http://satoshico.in/), and doing everything we can to obtain Bitcoin, we were still stuck in our rut. Everything we did, no matter how much time, money, and effort went into something, it all seemed to come to an end. Since giving up, especially this late in the game (I personally have been unemployed since my daughter was born; over a year-and-a-half ago) was not an option. We looked towards bounties in an attempt to grab some Bitcoin we could potentially use to hold our families at bay (most likely fiat conversion). Scam. Scam. Didn't pay. Scam. What were the terms? Scam. Can we lower our price? Once again, we were both facing defeat at every corner. Our home in the crypto-currency world had nothing left but a box of tissues and some code written on the peeling wallpaper.
Hello Pinkcoin!
To our surprise, our efforts in the cryptography world did not go unnoticed and the Pinkcoin team welcomed our support with open arms. Our home had a raging party again, our spirits were once again as high as kites, and our drive was at full speed once again. My fingers began banging out code. Projects, deadlines, milestones, and the future were all too clear. I could finally use my fifteen years of experience, passion, and self-motivation to create something to whole world can enjoy. Thank you Pinkcoin for doing things differently and not adding to my pile of failure.
I appreciate you reading my life story in a nutshell. I look forwarding to reading what all of you care to share and I hope that one day I can help you; unlike so many have not done for me.
I am a code monkey.
I am Devan.
I am Tranzium.
I LOVE websites.
I LOVE code.
I am Pinkcoin.
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Keep up the good work.
