My name is John Conde and I am a Web Developer for a medium-sized credit card processing company based in New Jersey. I've worked there for almost four years and as you can guess I am an expert in credit card processing. I've established merchant accounts for over 1,000 businesses covering almost every product/service and style. There are few in the industry who's knowledge parallels mine as I am knowledgeable in everything from sales to programing to equipment/software to Interchange, etc. so if you have a merchant account question definitely feel free to ask.

I built my first website back in 1997. It was, of course, a Geocities site. I was bad at web design but still made all of my friends and family check it out every time i made a change (which was every day). My knowledge grew and now I run my own company on the side called brainyminds. I have a partner named Sara who is actually the on who started the company. I joined on late last year and in April of this year we officially registered as an LLC in the state of New Jersey. We do everything from design to development and merchant accounts. We have also entered the web publishing business but we've only just begun with that so nothing exciting to report there. Overall we are doing well and growing at a good pace. I am very pleased with our progress.

I'm also very knowledgeable in Search Engine Optimization. (Yeah, everyone is an expert!). For those of you who have been to the SitePoint forums will have seen by now my Search Engine Optimization FAQ and Google FAQs. One thing you won't get from me when it comes to SEO is a bunch of nonsense and baseless info. And I'm not afraid to call it out when I see it.

I'm no newbie to forums, either. I'm a regular at SitePoint (I also go under the name of stymiee there). I am a Team Leader in their Grow and Manage Team which covers the SEO and eCommerce forums. Basically, I am in charge of that entire section from a member point of view (their staff structure is quite unique). I am very active in terms of posting and hopefully will be here, as well.

When I code I prefer to use PHP and MySQL running Apache on Linux (LAMP). I also know Perl, xHTML, CSS, and JavaScript (including using the DOM and AJAX). I write my xHTML and CSS to be valid.

I am an avid FireFox user and evangelist. I use 35 extensions at last count. I'm an expert spyware remover thanks to my newbie family and friends and I am also (almost) a certified ethical hacker. If I bothered to take the test I would be certified.

For fun I like to play roller hockey. I'm usually a goalie although I don't have any problems putting the biscuit in the basket as well. I also weight lift regularly and like to stay in shape although that darn pasta keeps finding its way to my belly.

I've gotten off to a pretty good start I think. Heck, I've already got one referral! Hopefully I'll hang around for a while and have some fun learning and growing with all of you.

Hi John, with that background I for one certainly hope you do hang around for a while. I suspect I am not alone in that...

Thanks for the warm welcome, Davey. Much appreciated.

Hello,

I'm thinking perhaps I didnt say enough about me

There are no rules about introductions, say as little or as much as you are comfortable with.

Hi, John.

Glad to see you here. I browse the SP forums occassionally, but have really not been active. After reading about directory submission, forums, article submission, SEO techniques, etc., reading the same questions (posted by people new to the field) gets kind of boring, so my visits to SP are down to one quick browse per day, if that.

Good introduction! Very thorough. One question (curiousity): Why did you pick the "stymiee" handle? Does it have any particular meaning?

Regards,


David

The SEO and related forums definitely get old after a while. I occassionally take a break from them to save my sanity. But I always find myself going back.

How I choose "stymiee":

I was playing floor hockey in high school gym class and tried to play forward...but no one would pass to me! So I jumped in goal so I could at least touch the puck every now and then. Low and behold I was good at it. I was especially good at making glove saves (the flashy kind, too ). In the same class as me was someone who played Ice hockey (he used to leave welts on my chest whenever he took a shot. We didn't wear any real padding!) and he was impressed with my ability to make saves against him and everyone else. Turns out he was also a big Little Rascals fan (remember Stymie?). Well, to make a big save is to stymie them so he called me Stymie.

Many many MANY years later I finally decided to learn how to work a computer and wanted to use email. I was in a computer lab in mycollege when I was trying to figure out how to set up my school email account. Like I said, I was trying to learn how to work a computer and was having problems. Some dude next to me offered to help and told me I should use Hotmail instead (pre-M$). He asked what I wanted my username to be and I said Stymie. But when he set up the account he added and extra "e" at the end. Ever since then, I have been Stymie in the rink and Stymiee online.

Hi and welcome!! I find the same thing with many SEO forums ... if you post in DaniWeb's, I promise to throw some intelligent discussion your way.

That would be great! But I can't promise my replies will be intelligent, though.

Good grief.