About the Author, Todd Rafferty
Taught myself HTML / design in 1994 and kept with it and began persuing technical jobs. Learned CFML while employed @ MetalSite, Inc. in March 1999, at which point I began my career as a developer. Amazingly, four months later I was promoted to Site Architect Manager. I was sent to Japan for a week to help get the MetalSite Japan venture get started. Despite my schedule, in December 2000, I graduated with honors from Art Institute of Pittsburgh with an associate degree in specialized technology, Multimedia (3.6 gpa), during that time at MetalSite I was promoted to ColdFusion / UI Architect.
I departed from MetalSite in Feburary of 2001 becoming a consultant for Maxim Group. August 2001, I signed up fulltime with H2 Design Group, Inc. During this time I became even more familiar with datamodelling, mysql and more importantly development methodology. I also realized how important being part of a development community and helping out others became. After all, you should attempt to put back into the community what you get out of the community. During 2002-2004, I've was part of Team Macromedia. I stepped down of my own volition. I'm still active in the community. I can be found on some coldfusion mailing lists and I participate as much as possible in alpha/beta releases of ColdFusion.
I recently stepped up to volunteer as Community Manager for Railo Open Source. I really enjoy using Railo on my personal site and I'm currently building a CMS for a school using it. I feel that the Railo community really needs some help in terms of documentation, faqs and such and I offered my assistance to the Railo team. It's slowly coming together and I see now, there's always work to be done. If you have any questions about Railo, please feel free to contact me.
So, where the hell did you go?
Heh. Uh. Yeah. I took some personal time off from blogging and such. I'm happy to report that since then, I bought a house, adopted 2 dogs and ended up with a wife with 2 kids. Amazing what happens when you're not expecting it. I'm back now!
WTF? Why "rat"?
I get this all the time, why did I choose 'RAT'? Well, this stems back to my childhood. Way back in the good ol' days when my parents used to own a bar, I frequented some of the arcade games we had. I had competition though, my older brother. Both of our initials are 'TAR' and it became confusing as to whose high score was who's. So, I started marking my high scores by reversing my initials, so, anyone that saw 'RAT' knew that it was me. I love the internet, the technology, the web, etc. I had registered another domain, but it just didn't work and I wanted to settle down on one domain. So, I chosed web-rat.com after that and stuck with it.