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- First name: Kim André (in daily use: Kim)
- Last name: Akerø
- Nickname (Internet world alias): "NeonNero"
- Previous nicknames: "KeZe", "Kimandre", "imPRESSion", "Wairdoe", "Spacecom" (the latter not to be confused with the Israeli communication satellite company SpaceCom, which I later discovered, a discovery that lead to a nickname change on my part)
[edit] Personal background
I was born February 17, 1980, in Ålesund, Norway, and currently still reside there (as of March 2006). My parents divorced in 1993, and I have two sisters (born in 1983 and 1998, the latter with the same father only). Since the divorce, I've lived with my mother. My mother remarried in 1995. I was brought up as a Lutheran, but ever since my confirmation, I've undergone a philosophical battle within myself, and am now an agnostic, although I still attend a few services for the sake of honoring my family (mainly baptisms, confirmations, weddings and funerals).
[edit] Professional background
[edit] The very start
I remember getting access to my uncle's Commodore 64 (one of the first versions released, mind you) around 1990, something which I would say was the start of my professional path. My uncle was leaving to work in Singapore[1], so he left behind his Commodore with us (along with a floppy disk drive, a bunchload of floppy disks with software and games, a FastLoad cartridge and a Brother printer, which we never got to work properly), and more specifically, in my room. We were told how to load a couple of specific games, Oil's Well and Jumpman, each on a seperate floppy. After a week or two, my curiosity lead me to find out what else was to be found in the big box of floppies, and later to find the instruction manual for the machine itself, detailing the inner workings of Commodore BASIC, which basically started my computer programming experience. Over the first few years, I made a small amount of applications for myself, and even started some simple games and demos to basically prove to myself what I could do. None of my works on the Commodore 64 were ever published or shown to anyone but myself, though, but at least it got me started. My parents bought the Commodore from my uncle as a gift to me a few years later.
After my confirmation in 1995, I used all my gift money on my first personal computer, a 486 DX2/66Mhz computer with 8MB RAM and a whopping 420 MB hard disk drive. This exceeded the MPC level 2 standard, which was quite a definite standard at the time. I also got a pirated version of Visual Basic 1.0 for Windows, which enabled me to continue making nonsensical software in the BASIC programming language. In fact, none of the applications I created during my first 10 years were ever published, and about 95% of these were either complete and utter nonsense or useless. Later, I also got my hands on Visual Basic 3.0, and later on, Delphi 1.0 and 3.0 (I got the latter two as a free full version from computer magazines).
[edit] Enter the web
After starting secondary school in 1996, I was fully introduced to the Internet, having only tried it once (and for less than an hour) on my uncle's laptop when he came to visit a few years earlier. And as basic computer understanding was one of the required study in the first year, we also had the Internet as one of the subject in that class. My investigative nature made me drift into the art of web design, and of course, HTML. My first website was for my "company", created under my friend's webspace. This website was an awful one, when looked in retrospect, and it no longer exists in any form. It was during this time I registered my first domain name, KIMANDRE.COM. I even had put up a few versions of a website during these years, profiling my business ways (which weren't a lot). Due to economic reasons (after all, I was only a student at the time), the hosting space for the domain expired, and so did the domain name a few years after that. During this time, I did a lot of experimenting with website designs for my own sake, whenever time allowed for it in between studies.
Back in 2001, when checking on the status of my old domain name once again, it was still available, and since my economy had improved by then, I decided to get my old domain name back, and at the same time make sure I would never lose it again. This was also the time for my come-back into the Internet world, and I made a decision to make my intentions of going into business more definite, by registering myself as a self-employed business under the name KAA Design (since self-employed businesses in Norway must include the family name in the business name, the actual name included my full name, and was shortened down to my initials in daily use). This changed to the name Betadome Digital Media in late 2003, when I felt it was time to express the expanded level of services performed by my business. In the years since 2001, I've had few, but happy, customers (mainly due to the lack of self-marketing) under my own business. In this time, I've also certified myself as a Microsoft Certified Professional, as well as Microsoft Office User Specialist] (a Master certification for Office 2000, although the program is now called Microsoft Office Specialist), all of which were performed in the year 2001.
[edit] A step back
In March 2002, I got to learn the importance of having a backup of data. The hard way. The harddrive I had used as a data storage drive quickly started failing, and went to a complete halt, to a point where I had to disconnect the disk drive from the main computer to allow the computer to start up at all. This data drive contained the only copy of the data I had worked on since my entry into the PC [Platform (computing)|platform]] in 1995 and up to that point in time. I had already cleared out my old 486 computer to make way for other testing purposes at that time, and had transferred all the data to this new harddrive. You can imagine the terror of having to retrace 7 years of work and data, including music that I had downloaded (including hard-to-get music, even on CDs). The damaged harddrive was packed into a anti-static bag and put on a shelf until the day I could afford recovering all data from the disk (and yes, I'm taking donations).
[edit] Getting on with it
A real boost in personal success came when I got a job as a technical assistant at IntraHouse in late 2003, making my self-employed business a secondary job bound for my spare time. My job as a technical assistant has later been expanded and now includes being responsible for all servers being up (both Windows-based and Linux-based), user/customer support and some programming.
[edit] Things missed above
Since my first touch with the web, I've also programmed in several languages; including (in chronological order) JavaScript, SSI, Perl, PHP (with MySQL), some ASP/VBScript and more to come in future times.
