My full name is Jason Daniel Carter. I was born on May 29th, 1976 in the Harrisburg Hospital in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA to Ronald Richard Carter and Karen Sue Scott Carter. I was born 5 weeks early and so had to spend the early part of my life in an incubation chamber until my body was ready for the outside world. I was born with very blonde hair, almost white, which is quite different than what I have now; brown. I lived in Linglestown, Pennsylvania from 1976 thru 1984. My parents had rented a house there. In June of 1980, my parents had another child, my brother Joshua Dustin. I started kindergarten in the fall of 1981 at Linglestown Elementary School. I used to have to walk to school back then which was about half a mile or so away. I remember there was a park followed by a cemetery that I had to walk through to and from school. There was also an Exxon gas station along the way that had penny candy. I remember spending my $2 allowance on gummy fish all the time. Yummy! We had 2 dogs, Samoyeds, named Shannon and Bandit, they were outside dogs. We also had a cat, a Siamese, named Ming. I think we had more cats, but I can't remember them. I can't remember much more from back then other than I liked to draw a lot, play with my Legos, and wanted to learn how everything worked. In 1984 my parents bought their first house and the family moved to Rutherford, Pennsylvania. We lived in a double home. Its one of those houses that are split down the middle. Its kind of like a town house except that there are only two of them connected together. We lived there from 1984 thru 1988. The neighborhood wasn't the greatest there as we later found out. There were a lot of kids to play with there, but unfortunately they were not always nice to each other. I had many street fights while we lived there. My parents had screaming matches with the neighbors all the time and police were called out to our neighborhood almost everyday for domestic disturbances. I even got to watch a drug bust take place down the street from my house. As a kid it was fascinating to watch. One time my neighbor called the fire department to report a fire in another neighbor's home just to have them come out because their neighbor was being too loud during a party and they wanted the fire department to shut them up. Unfortunately for her it back fired and the fire department wasn't happy with the neighbor at all. There was a lot of drama there, but there were also good times. I had some close friends in Rutherford; Justin, Josh, and Kevin. During the winter the neighborhood kids would have huge snow battles. There would be like 20 kids participating. In the summer we would ride our bikes in the "Trails" on things we dubbed the "Whoopdy Doos", "Bowl", and "Roller Coaster." The area was huge, literally acres upon acres of wooded land to have fun bike riding on. We even had forts setup back there. We would also ride our peddle cars down the street of a large hill in races. There were many times we hit cars on the way down, but hey, we were kids and it was fun! Oh yeah, there was also this one time that my younger brother found a stick of old dynamite back in the Trails. He brought it home and showed it to my parents, they freaked out! They put it outside in the shade and called the police. An officer came out to the house and picked up the stick and started reading what was on it through his walkie-talkie to another person. About 30 seconds into describing it, the person on the walkie-talkie told the officer not to pick it up and that it was probably very unstable. The look on the officer's face when he was told that was classic. You could tell he was very nervous and gently put the stick back on the ground until a bomb disposal unit could come out to take care of the dynamite. I attended school at Rutherford Elementary School. While there I quickly became one of the smartest kids in my class. I loved school and I loved learning. I excelled in Math and Science the most. I was fascinated with space and engineering and would also do long division just for the sake of it. I also started getting into the Arts. I would draw all the time. I could draw better than most of the kids in my school, including the older ones. From then on I took artistic classes all the way through college. I also was very active as a kid, often playing kickball, basketball, baseball, dodgeball, football, riding bike, swimming, and a neighborhood game called "Chase." I often competed in school games. I won many races, obstacle course challenges, and a jump rope contest. Also during school elementary school I got introduced to my first computer. It was 6th grade, 1987, and we had just received some Commodore computers. We didn't get to use them much back then because of them being so expensive and new, but once I got to use it a little I was hooked. In the summer of 1988, my family moved again, this time to New Cumberland, Pennsylvania. Even though we are considered to be in New Cumberland, we actually live about 5 minutes or so out of town. We moved into a blue and brick bi-level on a nearby mountain. This was much different than the house we lived in previously. Here there were no kids immediately nearby. We could not play in the street either. We had about 1.5 acres of land and most of it was wooded. Here we had to make do on our own for entertainment. My brother and I would explore the woods during the summer most of the time, but during the winter and the evening you really couldn't do much. I joined the local football team, the RedLand Patriots, the following season and at least had that to do. During tryouts I was told that I was good enough that I could stay on the Midget squad, but that I might not see a lot of playing time, so they gave me the choice of staying, or moving a level down to the pony-midget league. I wanted to play so I chose the latter. During my time with that league, I played as an offensive tackle, defensive cornerback, and a special teams weapon. I was one of the fastest kids in the league, at age 13 I could run a 6 second 40 yard dash. They used to use me to run special plays like the Reverse, Trips, and the Statue of Liberty. It was a total surprise to most other teams and I scored many touchdowns. We won the championship that year against Harrisburg and I was nominated the Offensive MVP. I went to school at Lower Allen Middle School from 1988 to 1990. It was there that I made my first friend that I still have to this day; Edward Bennighove. He was wheelchair bound from a young age because of a birth disorder but that didn't hurt him mentally at all. He was very out-going and extreme. I got so much of a kick out of him. It was also him though that started my demise, he will vouche for that. I was a straight A student until I met him. He got me to do and think about other things in school and so it was then that my grades started to lower. I never failed a class, but I also was not an A+ student anymore, more like a B- student now. After middle school, I went on to RedLand High School till my graduation in 1994. Here I made some more life long friends; Michael Spoonhour, Chuck Bobb, and Sean Lohr. All these guys have been some of the greatest friends anyone could ever ask for. They would do anything for me and vice-versa. I had a great time in High School and just like most everybody else, I would love to go back. I studied Arts and computers in school as I was taking my college prep courses. I also participated on the football team my freshman and sophomore years as well as stage crew. I tried out for wrestling, but the coach wanted me to drop down to the next weight class. There was no way I could do it because I was already so small and toned. The only way I could have possibly managed it was to drop muscle mass. After trying it out, I decided it wasn't for me and quit the team. During the summer of 1992 I was involved in a car accident that ruined my sports career for the rest of my life. I was with some friends heading for a lake to do some swimming when we ran head on into a van on a country back road. Everyone survived, but I was injured the most. I was in the back seat of the car without a seat belt on. In the crash I was thrown forward into the driver's seat which resulted in me ripping my back muscles, injuring my back, whiplash, and a concussion. My body went into shock shortly after the crash and I almost passed out on the side of the road. When the emergency crews arrived I was rushed to the hospital first in an ambulance. After that I could not play anymore sports. I really regret that day and the fact that I didn't have a seat belt on. I never go anywhere anymore without first putting on my seat belt, too bad I had to learn the hard way. During the last two years of High School I got to take computer classes again. I took Computer Graphic Arts and Multimedia classes. I quickly excelled beyond the teacher's expectations and was put on a special curriculum the following year. Also during that time I received my grandfather's old Tandy Color Computer 2 that I used to learn Basic and even went as far as programming a few programs on it including one game, though I did end up using up all the RAM on the machine before the game was even near completed. After graduating high school I enrolled into Harrisburg Area Community College taking a Graphic Design major. I also started working a retail position at Boscov's Department Store where I met another good friend; Brian Seno. Brian was a crazy guy, fresh out of the Army. He had grown long hair and played lead guitar and sang in a Rock band named Stem. He is also the person who got me into Rollerblading along with my High School friend Chuck. I created the band's web site which got much praise. Unfortunately after a couple years together they broke up to pursue careers of their own. I still am friends with Brian, but we don't hang out as much as we used to. At HACC I made another close friend, Trevor Keck, who was also into rollerblading and joined us on many road trips and outings. After only one semester at HACC I came to the conclusion that I should go to an art school if I was to pursue the arts. The following fall I enrolled into Bradley Academy of the Visual Arts and was accepted into their brand new Electronic Design curriculum. In this curriculum they teach traditional drawing, painting, and design as well as computer graphic design, multimedia, 3-d design, and video production. Unfortunately for me things seemed to move to slowly as I knew most of the things they were teaching already, sometimes better than the teachers, and I quickly picked up on anything new they tried to teach us. I stayed there for 2 semesters after which I again decided not to stay and opted instead to further my education on my own and start a career in the industry. I called up my good friend Ed and together we decided to go into business together doing Web site design. It was the summer of 1996 and the Internet was just starting to get introduced to the general public. We found this to be a great opportunity to start the business and make some cash at it. Our business was called NuView Studios. With Ed's help I learned HTML and Perl/CGI, this turned out to be of some major help to me for years to come. Initially we made a lot of connections and received a lot of work. We were doing a large range of web sites from small business to larger companies. There was one down side to our success though. Because we were o busy doing work, we had no time to go and retrieve new business once we were done with our current projects. When we were done, we had nothing to work on and so the business stopped. We tried to get more new business ventures, but neither one of us were good salespeople, we were designers. We did eventually get more business, but it was no where near the amount we had initially. In early 1997, I decided it would be best if I left the business to Ed and I would search for a job with an established company. I worked many odd jobs in retail, roofing, car maintenance, and a gas station attendant. One of the said retail jobs I worked was at Circuit City where I met a couple more good friends; Ray Troutman, Nick Grimm, and Andrew Juliana. We had a lot of parties at AJ's house and would go to the bar quite frequently to see local bands. Me and Ray were especially into Fuel at the time since they were still a local band and played here a lot. We also made quite a few trips together to locations like Toronto, Canada and Boston, Massachusetts. Nick and AJ also went white water rafting with me twice which was a blast! We still hang out almost every weekend as long as all of our schedules are free. I finally got back into the Multimedia field in the fall of 1997 working as a freelance web designer for Block Imaging Systems. That winter they asked me to come on board as a full-time multimedia developer. It was here that I was first introduced to Macromedia Director and the Lingo programming language that it uses. I was in charge of designing and programming web sites, putting together and running slide show presentations, setting up online video conferencing, and developing cross-platform multimedia CD-ROMs. I learned a lot about the production environment and process there. I continued to work there till about the summer of 1999 when I was offered a position at Autolycus Corp. as a Director of Technologies Integration. Autolycus was a new Internet start-up at that time and the Internet was getting extremely huge with sky-rocketing salaries appearing everywhere. How could I possibly turn down this opportunity? I couldn't. I designed web sites, developed back-ends for corporate customers, managed a small web team, researched new technologies and work practices, managed on-location photo shoots, travelled all back and forth across the United States meeting clients and partners, helped develop a patent pending technology, and managed and produced three software packages during my tenure there. I also made another close friend by the name of Jonathan Smith, heh... go figure. Jonathan was our Art Director and was my right hand man in almost all design decisions. After the Internet bubble burst and companies started folding, our revenues declined drastically and new venture capitol was next to impossible to find. We struggled for a while before finally in the summer of 2001 everyone was laid off. So here I was freshly unemployed and in a majorly lagging economy, what was I to do. I started sending out resumes to all the internet, marketing, and computer companies in Central Pennsylvania. After that turned up no results, I extended my search to the entire state, and then into Deleware, Maryland, and Virginia. I got a few leads, but nothing ironed out. To try to make some money and help pass the time, I took up doing freelance web/multimedia design and consultation. I've had a few projects over the months and have a few more that I am still currently working on, but it does not compare to having a steady secure position. I still maintain my job search and hopefully one day soon I will get that elusive job. Besides the job hunting and freelance work, I manage to do many other things too. A passion of mine is going to see local live music. I just love going out to see a good live band play right there in front of you with your friends while drinking a few beers. Music is just so powerful and moving, and when a band does it well it can be quite an experience. I am lucky enough to be living in Central Pennsylvania where we have a really good music scene. A few big bands have come from the area, and there will be more to come. One band in particular that I have been following now since about March 2002 is Juiced. They are a cover band who pretty much play everything from 80's to Punk to Rock to Pop to Metal. I know, some of you might be thinking... "cover band... oh, how great can a cover band really be... all they do is covers". Well you just don't know till you see them. They do the songs so extremely well, you'd swear that it was the real band there playing them. And their stage presence is just incredible, they really know how to get a crowd going! There are a couple other bands I've checked out that are pretty good too, like Facial, Nevermoure, Emily's ToyBox and Backstreet Law... but it is Juiced that is the one band to rule them all! Another passion of mine is billiards. I play pool all the time. If I go out to the bar, and its actually to not go see a band, then its to go play pool. I would consider myself a decent player. When I actually play pool a lot, like everyday for a month straight which I've been known to do, then my skill goes up more. We used to have a pool table of our own years ago but had to get rid of it because it was just too big for our house. Lets see, what else do I do... hmmm... well I also probably play way too many games on my PS2, GameCube, and computer. I've been known on many occasions to forget to eat, sleep, etc. when I'm in one of my gaming modes, but hey, I'm a 26 year old single guy, isn't that what we are supposed to be doing? Whelp, I can't think of what else to write in here for now, so I'll leave it at this. If you find yourself down in your life for whatever reasons, look at what you do have that is good. Health, Friends, Career, whatever it is, everyone has atleast one good thing in their life that can make them smile. If you can't find it, then contact me and I will cheer you up. Look at my Fun Stuff... something there has to make you smile. Remember, as long as you can smile, everything can't be bad. Till next time... PEACE! Update: Wow... well I thought I would let everyone know who reads this that I actually got me a job... well kinda. I am now working for/with Juiced, you know, the band I can't get enough of and that I have pics all over my site of. Well it turns out that being unemployed and getting on a 3rd shirt type of sleeping schedule worked out better than I would have thought. I now nave my crew badge and go to ALL of their gigs with them. You may ask what it is I am doing for them. Well, I roadie for them (packing, unpacking and setting up all their gear, which for you who don't know... is a HELL of a LOT of stuff; they have their own stage lighting and sound system), take pics of the band and crowd during the show for use on their web site, I run their lighting system during the show, am going to help put together their CD (it will have an interactive multimedia side that will play in everyone's computers), and lastly have taken over the role as their Production Manager. Another Update: I've been working with Juiced now for a year and as it turns out, I'm now in training to become their full-time sound engineer. I will know every aspect of Production now and will be hiring a full crew here shortly to work with me. Other good news aside from the band stuff... well it seems this year is the year of the ladies with me. Starting off right after midnight on New Year's Eve I started getting real popular with the ladies. I can't say I blame them... you know with me being all that and then some (j/king... haha...) but I never expected it to the amount of game I seem to have now. Well... if there is any further news... I'll be sure to post it. Back to Home