About Me

Alright, first off, if you’re looking for my resume it’s not here. It’s at the resume link on your left. If you really want to know something about me then this is the place.

Hobbies:

I do some stuff. Like roller-hockey; I play a couple times a week. Last year I started skiing and now I can’t stop. All we have here in the midwest is Hidden Valley. It’s not huge or fancy but they keep something resembling snow on the ground so I’m all good. I play video games. Up until a couple months ago I was a connoisseur however I opened a WoW account and now I’m pretty much a one-trick-pony. While I’ve kind of given up photography as a profession, I do still enjoy it greatly. Other than that, I still play guitar once in a while, ride a bike, visit the zoo…

The Big Long Story

Ahh, what a glorious and exciting life I have lived! Ok, maybe not glorious but sooo exciting. Erm, well I know it’s at least life. I was born on July 30, 1979 in the metropolis of Staunton, IL (pop. 4700, thank you) to Norman and Valerie Randle. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, I was 3 weeks late and had to be dug out with a sledgehammer and a spatula. It’s alright because I’m sure the crack team of doctors were performing at the top of their game in that small, barely-a-town town. Yeah, they don’t have a maternity ward there any more.

Anyway, on with life. I attended Staunton Grade School, then Staunton Middle School, and ended up in *all together now* Staunton High School. Apart from the divorce and subsequent remarriage of parents (picked up a step-sister in there too) school was average I’d say. I had great times with great friends whom I talk to entirely too little but such is the life of a reclusive geek.

Moving on to college things get a wee bit more interesting. I was always interested in computers. My dad got me my first at about age 8. It was a fancy 8088 with dual floppies and an EGA monitor (yes, it twas before the dawn the the hard drive). I won some goofy award in high school for being a tech-dork so proceeding along that same path in college, I majored in Computer Science and minored in Math. I actually ended up taking every Computer Science course they offered at Saint Louis University and, with the exception of a few of the very early courses, I did quite well in them. Any other course was a disaster waiting to happen but I really enjoyed the CS stuff. Somehow they also made me president of the Math and Computer Science Club which has surprisingly little to do with Math or Computer Science. I’m also quite sure I was the lowest overall GPA to ever hold the position… renown! :). The powers that be also stuck me on some advisory committee as a representative of the Math and Computer Science departments. I must’ve had someone there fooled. But then she showed up…

It was in one of those gloriously romantic Math courses I met the love of my life. It’s actually a much sweeter and less geekier story than one might imagine. After a crushing day of Calculus II I was strolling back to the parking garage when, lo-and-behold I noticed a fellow Calc II classmate by the name of Kimberly Patti. She was a tiny, quiet, cute person who I had never heard speak a word. Me, being the socially awkward yet still quite friendly person I am, trodded on over and queried oafishly “Wha-ja think of that quiz?” Well, I must’ve been wearing the right deodorant that day because it had a profound effect on said Kimmy. The following few weeks, Kim would just kind of show up where I was going. After a class I’d catch her walking to my next class. We’d bump into each other in the morning, that kind of thing. You see, I’m a pudgy, dorky, not so attractive kind of guy. It’s rare for a beautiful brainiac to take a liking to my kind so I hope ya’ll can forgive my cluelessness. Anyway, after some wooing and a score of ‘chance’ meetings I fell head over heals as well. We dated for 4 and 1/2 years before I asked her to marry me. July 31, 2004 was the golden day. It’s been almost five years now and every day is better than the last.

Yep, it’s us. Told you she was hot!

OK, I can sense the geeks in the audience are getting uncomfortable with all this talk of the opposite sex so I’ll sum up the romantic part right-quick. Point #1: Even though you might be an awkward geek, if you wear the right deodorant you might still get the girl. And Point #2: I have a hot, funny, incredibly smart wife and you don’t! *snoochy boochies, biatches*

There were a couple other really cool events around this time that I neglected to mention. My mom gave birth to my 2 little brothers, Alec and Clayton. They are a couple of wonderful little guys and I take it as my primary goal in their childhood development to get them all wound up by wrestling and tickling right before it’s time for me to leave and for them to sleep. Seriously though, I can’t think of much more fun than hanging with the bros.

So life continues. I started interning at Tubular Steel, Inc. in St. Louis my Junior year of college. I worked part-time updating machines for Y2K and other mundane tasks. Eventually, they put me to work experimenting with their first terminal server which led to writing batch-based logon-scripts which led to administrative programs in C++ which led to database-integrated administrative programs written in Powerbuilder with C++ backends. Somewhere in there I started full time.

After six years of climbing the corporate ladder at TSI (programmer, senior programmer, technical lead, development manager) I finally moved on to a company called Mozaic, LTD. I was only there a few months before the a major contract fell through and my time was largely spent on idle. So, I did what anyone with a well paying job that doesn’t require a lot of effort would do… forsake all that become a freelance consultant. So here I am… Mike Randle Consulting, LLC. Most of my work is still for Tubular Steel and Mozaic. It keeps food on the table until Kim becomes Vice-Supreme-Commander at CitiGroup at which point I intend to retire and work on my golf swing.

Cripes, well I think I’ve been babbling far too long. If there’s anything I’ve missed then feel free to mail me… and if you’re still reading you really, REALLY need to get a life.

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