O'DonnellWeb
"Life is hard. It's harder if you are stupid." - John Wayne
Who is Chris O'Donnell?
I am not the actor. I have never been the actor. I have never used this site to imply that I was the actor. That hasn't stopped hundreds of people from sending me fan mail though.
My acting career started and ended in 5th grade. I had a non-verbal, yet very challenging role as tooth decay in a Dental Health Week production on oral hygiene. I followed up that success by trying out for the part of Hansel in Hansel and Gretel. My best friend got the role, and the kissing scene with Gretel. I got offered the job as stage manager. I took the hint, and left the stage behind forever.
Today, I am in technology sales. I'm the rare salesperson that actually understands computer technology. Do you know any other career salesperson that dual booted their laptop ( XP / Ubuntu ) just for fun? The combination of geek and sales skills has served me well. At the moment, I'm selling professional services automation software for a small company here in the DC area. My background includes selling in the Sun/Oracle/Cisco VAR channel, web hosting and design for a number of different firms, and VoIP services. There was also an aborted attempt at starting an open source consultancy, and I've been known to dabble in freelance web development occasionally too.
I live in the south DC suburbs with my wife, two great kids, two dogs, one snake, and a horse. The horse belongs to my daughter, I just pay for it, and pay for it, and pay for it some more. The snake belongs to my son. It doesn't cost much at all. My son has mercifully ended his basketball career, so I'm done coaching youth basketball. I still coach baseball though. My horse show dad responsibilities are pretty much limited to towing the horse, cleaning up manure, and lifting heavy stuff.
If you want to pay me a lot of money to move somewhere where I can afford a horse farm, let's talk :)
I've maintained a web site since 12/31/1995. I even updated it frequently and wrote weekly essays way back then. Thankfully, none of that really early stuff survived to be included at Archive.org. I jumped on the blogging bandwagon early too. O'DonnellWeb has been a blog since early 2001.
For more information: Resume | Site archives
A chronology of my life
(Idea totally cribbed from Kottke.org) 1967: I was born. I don't remember it. 1968:1969:
1970: My brother was born. I remember my parents leaving me with the neighbor when they went to the hospital. 1971: Got grounded for the first time. The offense was throwing rocks at a car...that happened to be owned by a police officer. 1972: Started kindergarten while living in Spain (Torrejon AFB). I rode a blue bus. 1973: 1974: Played T-ball. I learned much later that Greg Maddux was in the same league at the same time. 1975: Played T-ball again. Spent a lot of time climbing trees. My other brother was born. King Franco of Spain died. I remember the increased police presence in the streets after Franco died. I have no memory of my brother being born. Sorry Brian. 1976: Moved to Indiana(Grissom AFB). Played a lot of baseball. Discovered that kids in stateside schools had been writing in cursive for a year. I had not even started yet. Had to stay in at recess and after school to learn cursive. Developed a hatred of cursive that continues to this day. 1977: Played a lot more baseball. Scored winning goal in all-star soccer game. Won role of cavity in theatrical production of good dental hygiene. Tried to build on that success by trying out for role of Hansel in Hansel & Gretel. My best friend got the part. I got offered job as stage manager. 1978: Moved to Panama City, Florida in summer before starting 6th grade. Developed interest in girls. Won school spelling bee. I was and continue to be a lousy speller. 1979: Started Junior High School. Played more baseball. Continued interest in girls. Elected to Student Council and joined a variety of other suck up organizations at school. 1980: Came to realization that I would never be a major league baseball player. Quit playing and spent more time fishing. Spent more time worrying about girls too. 1981: Ran for school president. Lost to guy who is now a lawyer. 1982: Moved to Dugway, Utah. Made high school basketball team. 1983: Moved again - to Kwajalein Island, Marshall Islands. First day there my Chem. teacher Mr. Taylor asked me what a mole was. I replied a brown furry critter that lives in the ground. Came to realization that honors chemistry stateside was a joke. 1984: I plead the 5th on this entire year. 1985: Graduated from high school. Accepted at Purdue, Colorado State, University of Florida. I chose Purdue. 1986: I had a lot of fun. Fun was reflected in GPA. 1987: Met Michelle. Fell in love. Changed majors. Flew back for start of my junior year without the funds to pay for college. Stood in line for several hours at financial aid office and was rewarded with enough money to stay. Grades started getting better, likely connected to Michelle and the change in major. 1988: Stayed in Lafayette during summer between junior and senior years. Worked at college bookstore. Read several paperback novels a day as I sat at cash register for 8 hours without a single customer. Got transferred to warehouse so I could at least work. Frat house was about 110 degrees, and I had a waterbed. Hung out at mall because it was air conditioned. 1989: Made Dean's list in senior year. Graduated from Purdue. Moved to Atlanta. Got first job, with Westvaco Corp. 1990: Started grad school at night at Georgia State. Proposed to Michelle. 1991: Bought first PC - Packard Bell 386. Got married in Hawaii. Bought house. Continued grad school. 1992: Moved into house. Kept working on MBA. Discovered BBS's. 1993: Finally finished Grad School, MBA with major in Finance. Interviewed for a bunch of finance jobs. Realized that I was making more in sales. Wife pregnant. 1994. Son is born. Turned down for promotion at Westvaco because my MBA wasn't from Harvard. Quit job. 1995: Bought second computer - Acer Pentium 120 MHZ. O'DonnellWeb 1.0 launched. 1996: Daughter is born. Got job with Web design start up. 1997: Start up goes public. Unfortunately, we were so busy calculating the value of our options that we forgot about little things like cash flow. Paychecks started bouncing - moved on to another web design firm. 1998: Got call from guy in CT - wants me to move to VA and sell web design. I do it. Pack up the family and move to Leesburg. Company reorganizes and I end up selling Sun servers, not design. 1999: Dot com boom. Life is good. 2000: Dot com still booming. Life is grand. Dot com bust. Unemployed at Christmas. 2001: Selling web hosting for Qwest. Life is good again. 2002: Company lost $2 billion in one year. Celebrates by sending 2500 employees to Vegas for a few days and puts us up at the Bellagio. Life is good. 3 months later I'm gone. Moved to Fredericksburg VA. 2003: Still selling web design. Daughter discovers her true passion in life - horses. Credit cards surrender. 2004: With a small consulting firm that specializes in designing and installing open systems based VoIP solutions. Daughter still wants a horse. Daughter has started her own business to save money for the horse. Business doing well. I may own a horse sooner than I planned. 2005:
About the Web site
- My primary HTML & CSS editor is Notetab Light.
- What few graphics exist on the site are manipulated in the Gimp.
- It mostly validates as XHMTL. I say mostly because I'm not going though 2000 pages to fix every little ampersand that was coded incorrectly.
- I use Movable Type to manage the blog.
- It is hosted with Digital Space.