Who is this guy?
Jacob Emerick is a web developer living in Appleton, WI. He currently works at SparkNET, Inc as an application programmer for a high-traffic website. xHTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, and SQL are his primary coding languages, though he does have experience with ActionScript 3.0 (Flash), Ruby, and Java. He also dabbles in design with Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. Besides working with websites, Jacob loves to read, hike, and be generally active. The Dune series by Frank Herbert and the Dark Tower books by Stephen King are some of his favorite reads, and he also enjoys everything from science fiction to the older classics. Most of his hiking is throughout the Western Upper Peninsula in a broad swath from Copper Harbor down to Marquette, especially the Huron Mountain range and Peshekee Highlands.
Growing Up
Born in Camp Pendleton, CA, Jacob spent his early childhood years moving between military bases. The family eventually settled down in Port Hope, a small farming community in the lower peninsula of Michigan, in the early 1990s. He attended both the public and Lutheran school in town, neither having more then fifteen other kids in the same grade. Jacob was in a number of extracurricular activities, ranging from academic to athletic and leadership to religious. On top of the organizations he worked several jobs: grounds manager for a local subdivision, dairy and pig farm helper, and even running his own small lawn care business. After graduating as valedictorian in 2003, Jacob went straight into college in Houghton, MI.
College Years
Jacob stayed at Michigan Tech from 2003 through 2009, moving from a Physics to Mathematics undergraduate and eventually working full-time for the university. He was quickly roped into student organizations and volunteer work, eventually becoming involved in the Undergraduate Student Goverment, Memorial Union Board, and Student Events Advertising. His primary interest was with the residential halls, running the Inter-Residence Hall Council for four years. During this time he coordinated events involving thousands of participants, handled a budget of $35,000 each year, and led sweeping policy changes, including banning smoking from the residence halls. After graduating, he picked up an application programming job at Michigan Tech and began exploring the local wilderness.
Other
Jacob takes pride in developing unique websites from scratch with few, if any, third-party frameworks. Did you notice the footer? Every webpage under the jacobemerick.com is powered by a custom-built php mvc. That's right - no Wordpress or Joomla here. If you want to double check, just view the headers sent by the server. In fact, the only framework Jacob uses is jQuery for Javascript, simply because it takes far too long to work around all the bugs in Internet Explorer. Also, if you want to know more about Jacob Emerick, find the 'special' easter egg on this page to view a fun fact.