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kennethcassal.com

10/8/2024

My first career before getting into software engineering (which itself ultimately led me to becoming a founder), was in the trades. I was a maintenance technician for a large gas station company called QuikTrip.

My job was to drive around and fix anything that went wrong in one of the 70+ gas stations we serviced. Some days the work was interesting, like troubleshooting what went wrong when all 20+ fuel dispensers were down (it's high pressure work, the stores lose thousands of dollars an hour when the fuel systems are down). Other times I'd just be doing boring/unsexy work like unclogging urinals, changing light bulbs, or replacing worn-out rollers on hot dog grills.

I worked there for 7 years and learned a ton. We had to fix many different types of equipment, and I got comfortable fast with troubleshooting. I think those troubleshooting skills have had some strong carry-over into the engineering world. Troubleshooting skills are great but the best thing I got from my gas station job was meeting my wife.

I met my wife at the gas station. I never get tired of saying that. It's usually a good conversation starter when people ask how we met. It was the typical story. She was the store manager, I was the maintenance tech. We hit it off and started dating after hanging out a bit outside of work.

Having a supportive spouse is a super power when you're trying to do something big, and my wife's support started really early into our relationship. We started dating in 2017, which is just a short while after I had discovered programming.

Just a year earlier I had wrote my first program. I fell into software engineering after I bought a raspberry pi so I could do a kegerator build. I wanted to build one after seeing a build with some interesting digital displays and sensors on reddit. I knew nothing about programming at the time but ended up really enjoying it after diving in head-first. After a few months of self-learning I decided to go back to school for computer science in 2017. I had decided I was going to stop being a gas station guy and become a software engineer instead.

I look back at this period of time fondly. It was one of those times in life where I actively made the trade to go heads down and grind to get something I wanted. I was working 50+ hours a week at my gas station job and working on a CS degree in the evenings. From the start, I was trying to optmize my time so that I could get good enough to get a job in software before finishing school. I figured if I could get someone to take a bet on me as an intern, I could potentially just get them to hire me full-time before finishing college.

My wife and I started dating while I was in this grinding phase. Early on, I mentioned in passing that I wanted to make a personal website. I thought it might be a good way to showcase some of the stuff I was building and maybe it could help me get a job. I was actively trying to spend as much of my free time as possible going to hackathons, building projects, going to meetups, etc. Basically anything that would increase my odds of a shot at a new career in software.

It was a great time in my life, working hard, dating someone I was really into, and the potential for something big on the other end.

A few months went by and things were going great between us. We were starting to really get to know each other and when we both had spare time (rare) we spent it together. Christmas came around and it was the first time we'd ever exchanged gifts. I went first. I got her a small model of the city we lived in (which we still have sitting on a shelf in our living room). She loved it!

I really had no idea what she would get me though.

After she opened my gift, she shyly handed me an envelope and waited to see my reaction. I initially thought she might've got me a christmas greeting card or a random gift card. She was trying to make it seem like it was no big deal when giving it to me. I opened it up and this is what I saw:

Christmas Gift

A domain! She got me a domain name so I could make a personal website, and she went through the trouble to do it in code.

Programming is not something my wife does. She's great at a lot of things but programming isn't one of them, she's never done it. She had found a friend of a friend who was a programmer to help her write the message on the card. She didn't have to go through this effort, but it meant the world that she did. It was the most thoughtful gift anyone ever gave me.

On the card she misspelled my last name, kennethcassal.com, but she did actually purchase the right domain name, kennethcassel.com

Unfortunately, I never got around to making that personal website. I was so busy working and building and dating the love of my life. Then I landed my first software internship. And just like I thought, it turned into a full-time role.

Every year around Christmas when the domain renews and my wife gets a notification about it, she asks if I'll ever do anything with it. I usually say I'm planning on it.

It's time to make right on that gift. I'm going to start writing more of my thoughts on my personal website here on kennethcassal.com kennethcassel.com