Mike Pirnat

About Me

A great big talking-head ego-page howdy to you!

I am currently a senior developer at Cleveland’s own AG Interactive, where most of my work is in Python, a
language that has sort of grown on me (like a fungus?). I maintain and improve the code that powers AmericanGreetings.com, as well as BlueMountain.com, Egreetings.com, MSN Greeting Cards, Yahoo! Greetings, AOL Greetings, Target Greetings, HatterChatter and Bloom by AG.

I am the de facto secretary for ClePy, a Cleveland Python user group, dealing with website updates and keeping notes on all of our meetings, as well as a semi-regular presenter and book reviewer.

My resumé is available as:

• Microsoft Word (.doc, 44KB)
• Adobe PDF (.pdf, 96KB)
• Plain text (.txt, 8KB)

I grew up in scenic Durango, Colorado; I couldn’t have asked for better roots.

I graduated from Case Western Reserve University in May 1999 with a B.S. in computer engineering. While I was there I spent a couple of years as an on-air DJ and later webmaster of WRUW-FM, Cleveland’s
most diverse and exciting radio station. I also served one term as president of the CWRU Anime Society, which continues to bring great anime to CWRU students and the Cleveland community.

On November 11, 2000, I married Elizabeth Boyd, who qualifies as a college sweetheart on the technicality that we managed to start officially dating about three hours before commencement started, and who qualifies as the light of my life by being nothing less.

Two (spoiled) siamese cats allow us to provide for them in exchange for their feigned affection. It’s a pretty good deal.

Excitement and Adventure

What am I up to these days?

• You can catch up with my latest adventures on my blog.
• Lots of times, I’ll bring my digital camera along.
• I started to use Flickr.com for photos taken with my silly cameraphone, and have since gone a bit nuts with my Canon SD700 and 350D. (I can stop any time I want to…)
• I presented at PyCon 2007!
• David Stanek and I presented at PyCon 2006!
• Lately I’ve been flirting with TurboGears, a Python framework for rapid web app development. It’s cool stuff, but I have embarassingly little to show for it so far, and certainly nothing as great as diggdot.us. Someday…

What Do You Want?

If you are one of the people who feels it necessary to send a gift my way (birthday, Christmas, Guy Fawkes Day, etc.), here are my various wishlists, collected here for your convenience. Maybe it’s a little tacky to put up links to stuff I want people to buy me, but then again it beats the heck out of having to dig around for the links whenever I get asked for them by family or friends, and isn’t that what technology is supposed to be all about?

• My wishlist at Amazon.com
• My wishlist at ThinkGeek.com
• I also appreciate gift certificates for Amazon, iTunes, and Borders (to fuel my primary habits).
• Gift certificates for DeliverMeFood are also a brilliant idea.