Bear Cahill

- Well, when I was a kid, I saw the movie War Games which really excited me about using computers in a way that maybe wasn't conventional. Being able to play games and hack into systems, like spy type stuff. There was a sale, I got a TI-99/4A as my first computer. Got Extended BASIC in the book and would just read through that, try out the different things, think of problems to solve, and try to solve 'em. Really was excited about it and passionate about it, but didn't think of it as potential job thing. Even when I went to college at first, started at LSU, I think I even checked the box as my major to be Journalism Advertising. I think I thought that that would be fun too, but I would tell my friends I'm really into computers and want to do computer science and program. A lot of times they'd say, oh, that's crazy, don't do that. The math would be way too hard, you'll never get through it. Despite those encouraging words, I decided that, well, if I really want it, I'll get through the math. It will be hard, I understand that, but I think I can do it if I want it bad enough. I started working at the math and kind of gettin' through it and it was hard, but made it happen. Then, after a couple of years at LSU, I got a job at IBM in Dallas. I moved up there and they offered to keep me on after that summer, so I transferred to UNT and finished up with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science there, got a job at Erickson and been doing it ever since. Well, I was at my last job and they were moving development to another state and I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but I was doing a little bit of Java freelancing on the side and was getting a severance package. I decide to try to make a living out of it and go full time. I was gettin' work from a friend of mine who had a team and he was feeding me some Java work, and this new thing called the iPhone was coming out. He said, "We're gettin' a lot of people asking "about this thing, so if you want to try to learn that, "we can probably get you some work." I definitely was concerned about having enough work, you know, going freelance for the first time. I'd always wanted to do it, but I was scared of where the work would come from and how I would get it. But, this time it felt really natural, I was really excited about it. I got a Mac Book Pro and a book on Objective C and a book on Coco. Most things were under NDA at the time, so you just kind of had to piece it together yourself. It was really exciting, it was really fun trying to figure it out. Very, very challenging. The platform was different, the language was different, the computer I was programming on was different. So, it was different in almost every way for me, but it was also very exciting, especially starting to get paid, and starting to learn new things, and getting more comfortable doing it on a mobile device. Something that was a little more tangible for me than in past jobs. I've been doing it ever since and lovin' it. I don't think I could go back now.