About Mike Hodnick
My name is Mike Hodnick. Let's see... where to start... this web site of mine is
a mix of personal and work-related stuff. Here you'll find anything from technical,
work-related blog posts to new music I've worked on. This site really is a gateway to
the rest of my life (well, at least what I choose to put out on the internet), so browse
around and take a look at whatever you like.
Presence
If you want to get a hold of me, you can either use my Contact
Page or you can find me through the following networking sites:
Work History
I've worked for Inetium
since the end of 2004. Inetium is a Microsoft partner in the Twin Cities area, and
we develop and consult primarily on Microsoft's SharePoint and CRM products. We
develop intensely on Microsoft's .NET development platform and bend (and often times
break) SharePoint until it submits in agony.
Prior to Inetium, in 2002 I worked as a Lead Developer at Nextel Partners (no longer
in existence) building intranet ASP.NET web applications - oh the days of .NET 1.0.
Before Nextel Partners I worked at Alto Consulting - a Microsoft partner in the
Twin Cities area. Before Alto I had an engineering career in the manufacturing sector.
I worked as a Manufacturing Engineer at a small circuit board shop in Hopkins, MN named Advanced Circuits - which was bought by
Allied Signal, which merged with Honeywell, and then completely shut down shortly
after I left. Prior to Advanced Circuits/Honeywell I worked at United Parcel Service
in their Industrial Engineering department - where I actually did classic ASP programming
against SQL Server 6.5. All of my gigs have been in the Twin Cities area.
Where I'm From
I grew up in Duluth, MN and lived there for about 25 years. I
went to Duluth East High School and graduated from the University of Minnesota Duluth with a degree in Industrial
Engineering. Despite that the only Comp Sci class I took in college was Fortran, my interest in programming and web technology skyrocketed
in college. I loved tinkering with my personal student web site, HTML, CSS, CGI
and Perl, and wrote a few Java Applets. I learned Visual Basic 5 on my own, which
completely confused me while I was also trying to learn object oriented programming.
These days I live in Chaska, MN
with my beautiful wife and daughter, Nicole and Eva. We've lived in Chaska since
2003. Prior to Chaska I've lived in
Crystal, MN and Falcon
Heights, MN (adjacent to the MN State Fair grounds).
What I Like to Do
I write music, play drums, and do a
lot of home recording. My main instrument is drums, and I've been playing
since I was twelve. I also play guitar and bass, am self-taught on those instruments,
and it shows. I love heavy music, but will pretty much listen or play anything.
Yes, anything. Most people say "anything but country" or "anything but rap". Country
is just pop rock with a twang. Hip hop is just... like no other genre. The best
paying drum gig I ever played was a polka gig at a VFW. I've played a number of
concerts with the Duluth Superior Symphony
Orchestra - most notably I played on Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances
and Shostakovich's 5th Symphony. I taught drum lessons for a while but
really didn't enjoy doing it. I've also played a lot of jazz gigs around the Duluth
area (Duluth has an incredible jazz scene, by the way. Just kidding.).
I'm a
Minnesota Wild season ticket holder. I love hockey. I love camping,
hiking, and traveling. I've at least driven through every US state except Alaska,
Hawaii, Louisiana, and Alabama. My right foot is crooked and angles to the outside
by about 10 degrees. I have a strange appeal for llamas and alpacas. Some days I
absolutely hate technology and want to go live in the mountains. Some days I can't
get enough of technology and don't own enough computers or know enough programming
languages. I like the dark, rain, snow, and quiet. Most of all, I think about how
big the universe is and how small the Earth and humans are... and there really isn't
much of a point to living in this blink-of-an-eye life unless you lighten up, barely
take anything seriously, and have fun.