About

My name is Darrin Hawe, I am a male 40-something year old Native Southern Californian that is addicted to computers and caffeinated diet soda. I'm married to my wife Sarah, and we live in "the OC" with our son Noah and our cat "Tabitha". To say that things are busy is an understatement.

I have worked as a Computer Services Engineer at the USC Information Sciences Institute since 1997. The work is interesting and I work in a department with great people. I have also worked as an Operations/Systems Analyst, small business resource analyst, and ISO documentation specialist in what seems like past lives. My résumé in .pdf format.

I received my Bachelor's of Arts degree in Business Administration with a Management Information Systems concentration from California State University Fullerton in 1993. Given some of the challenges I faced and my focus on everything other than school, I count my graduation from CSUF as one of my greatest achievements. I have recently been given another opportunity to prove myself academically as I have been accepted into the Fall 2009 cohort of CSUF's Masters of Science in Information Technology program. If all goes well (and I have no doubt it will), I'll have my masters degree in 2011.

Many of my personal interests lie in areas involving digital information. I enjoy computer-related digital hobbies such as photography, music, and DVDs. I'm becoming more comfortable with the idea and implementation of CSS styles. I am also a "recovering" online/MMORPG fan having successfully (if you want to call it that) maxed out characters in Diablo II, Diablo II LOD, Planetside, and Star Wars Galaxies.

I also enjoy my share of non-digital interests. Given the chance and space, I enjoy woodworking and will pursue more when physical space allows. I've done a fair amount of volunteering through my activities with Junior Chamber International. And I enjoy the occasional game of poker, Monopoly, Risk, Cosmic Encounter, Monte Carlo, or other games.

Just like revolutions before it, the digital revolution has given people tools with which to better live their lives. Digital photography has enabled a computer and software to replace film and processing. Computers and portable music players have and are replacing records/CDs/tapes. DVDs and digital on demand have replaced VHS. More and more consumer technology relies and is being transitioned to digital formats capable of being stored on a computer. I find these technologies fascinating and often irresistable.

digifiend is a place where I can post stories about things I find interesting. Those things involve both digitial and non digital topics. Because all work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy.

digifiend has been through several iterations involving different designs and software. In the beginning, I used a Mambo/Joomla CMS solution for the site but found that the community support was splintered and that the blog specific tools useful to bloggers were non existant. I then Migrated to a Moveable Type backend for a time and then eventually on to Expression Engine 1.5.1 in October of 2006. The shift to EE allowed for implementation and use of the moblog and photo gallery modules. More information about the nuts and bolts of digifiend can be found at the colophon.

Powered By: This site uses Expression Engine 1.6.3. Templates have been and are still being modified to be as CSS driven as possible. The 2-column layout was coded by me but inspired by numerous layouts in various ways.

Hosted By: EngineHosting. I switched to EngineHosting in April 2008 and have been pleased with their customer service and overall business philosophy.

Specific Thanks: Both the technique used for the main navigation menu and the method used for page identification were inspired by CSS Mastery. Andy Budd (with Cameron Moll and Simon Collison)'s tome, although skinny, has been valuable in learning CSS techniques necessary to start a CSS design from scratch.