About Me
If you even notice the lucky guy on the left, that’s me. The beautiful face on the right is my wife, as you may have guessed. There I am, software engineer, and student of foreign language - perhaps it helps to put a face with the name.
By day, I am a software engineer. For 3 years, I scaled ILL’s technology infrastructure from 3 to 18 languages, but today, I’m working on cool projects at Japan’s largest recipe site (and Ruby on Rails shop): COOKPAD.
By night, when I’m not playing basketball, I experiment with software design, read the latest research on the psychology of happiness, and study for Japanese Language Proficiency certification. My schedule seems a bit daunting at times, but I’ve been avidly fighting ignorance since ‘82 and have no plans of stopping soon.
To keep up the good fight, I read a lot, and love to try things myself. My favorite books include: The Seekers, Stumbling on Happiness, Design Patterns, Differentiate or Die, and The Pragmatic Programmer… just to name a few.
My recent accomplishments include: graduating Magna Cum Laude with my BBA in 2005, winning the PHP i5 Innovation Contest (see link on right “i innovate”), becoming a PHP5 Zend Certified Engineer, and completing my MBA with high concentrations in international business.
I’m now at an interesting crossroads in my life here in Japan. Culture and language barriers are challenging me in new ways, and I look forward to learning many new things. Daniel J Boorstin penned one of my most favorite quotes when he wrote the excellent book “The Seekers,” and it is so true to my life today: “The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge.”
Well, enough about me, it’s not as interesting as the many topics I hope to cover on this site.
-Charles Abbott
*although a few faces are missing above, this is one of the best photos of our group
