About Me, John Shipley, maybe... maybe not

I was a lego freak long before it was popular to be one. My father hated them, and twice during my early life several trash bags full of lego's mysteriously disappeared while moving between homes. He would deny losing them on purpose of course, even after questioning him again as an adult, thinking he would finally come clean. The coincidence seemed too coincidental.

In my opinion, lego's influenced how I think, and had a great deal to do with how much computers, websites and programming just "clicked" for me. Without them I'd likely be working at a restaurant, or possibly doing something else much more mundane. As a child I indentified myself with lego's as they were a significant part of my early childhood life. So, maybe, I can understand my fathers distain for them. Instead of me becoming interested in his work, woodworking, I spent my time in my own imaginary world of fantasy cities and far off science fiction realms influenced by Star Trek, Battestar Galactica, Star Wars, Space: 1999 and Logan's Run, made from lego bricks. Ah yes, the memories of making a cardboard and lego Viper with duct tape down in the basement just came rushing back!

Time marches on and things change. Now I live in the city of Mission Viejo in Orange County, California, and love to travel when the need arises. I've been a hobbyist, designing and developing websites since around 1995, and I love doing it. Designing and constructing websites isn't a nine-to-five job for me, but something I truly enjoy doing. Sometimes obsessively, hunting down every bug and worried over every misplaced pixel.

When I'm not designing websites, I'm a photographer, programmer, and photoshop artist. I have two cats, Pete and Miss Kitty who are both trouble makers in their unique ways. Over the last two decades I have slowly but surely moved towards becoming a vegetarian. I'm not there yet, as I still can not give up a good juicy steak. My favorite book is To Sale Beyond the Sunset by Robert A. Heinlein, my favorite film is Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, and my favorite album of all time is Time by ELO (I could listen to it indefinitely).

Need to know more? Go ahead and email me, the link is at the bottom right corner of this page, unless you misplaced it. Good luck!