Matthew's Personal Info

Name : Matthew Jay Akins
Born : January 24th, 1976, in Colorado Springs, Colorado
Eyes : Brown
Hair : Brown
Height : 6'5"
Occupation : Currently pursuing my BS in Comp Sci (UT-Dallas), AAS in Comp Networking (Richland), as well as the Novell CNE/MSCE/A+ certification paths(Richland). I am currently a client advocate for Stream International in Dallas, TX.

I was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado. I now reside in Dallas, TX. Other places I've lived include Atlanta,Georgia, and Verona, Italy. I went to public school, and graduated in one piece. Now I'm going to college, and loving it.(Ever wonder why they just don't just let us skip right to college?) In High School, I took lots of science (Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Computer Science), not much math (only trig and elementary analysis), and even less history and english (I grew up speaking and using the english language;why should I have to take a class to prove that I can do so?). Even though I grew up in Dallas, I took french, instead of spanish. What can I say? I love speaking french. I like their fries even more :)

Speaking of love, I'm married. Have a look at some pictures of her (as well as other people, myself included) HERE

In college, I've added to the classes that I took in HS : Calculus I+II, Linear Algebra, Discrete Math I+II, General Chemistry I+II, Computer Science I+II, Assembly.

My personal writing style is closer to writing computer code than it is to anything that they might have tried to shove off on me in English/Rhetoric classes. This is because I found my computer science classes much more useful and interesting than my english/rhetoric classes. In fact, I now get paid, as a part-time student technical support worker at UT-Dallas, more than I could as a full-time student english tutor. So if you have problems with how my web page seems to be barren of anything resembling paragraphs then keep this in mind : Web pages were originally used as a way to keep all of a person's bookmarks for gophers,veronicas,archies,etc. in one place. No graphics, no fancy shmancy prancy stylization. Just text. Just information.So in creating my web page I follow 3 priciples :

KISS (Keep It Simple in Style)
Make it useful
Make it easy to look at.

As such, I try to keep the large graphics non-existant or to a minimum (usually on sub-pages). This not only saves on download time, but prevents the screen from becoming glutted with pictures. I also try to use abbreviations or to prevent myself from being long winded. All of the links on my web page are ones that I use (hence, it's MY web page) On the frames-based page, the menu bar is for easy navigation through my web site. Some other things :

I don't spell check MY webpage. It's for me, I can read it and understand it. If this were a professional web page/site, I would do so.
I don't permit UCE (unsolicited commercial e-mail). I report anyone sending me UCE to my postmaster. This is to be taken seriously because this is a state university and it's illegal to use state resources for commercial purposes.
I don't like chain letters, even if they are by email. It wastes space, bandwidth, and my time. I like jokes,stories, anecdotes. But no chain letters. These are also not permitted by most universities (including mine).

Honors I received in high school include Academic Decathlon, National Honor Soceity, National Merit Semi-Finalist, and Superintendant's Scholar. Honors I've received in college include being selected as a member for the '97-'98 College Bowl team for UT-Dallas. We won our region as well as going on to place 7th at Nationals

My interests include Poetry, classical guitar,computers,french poetry,TI-85 calculators,internet talkers, cooking,jewelry, and existentialism, my computer, lacrosse,and college bowl (I'm the assistant Web admin for Zusammenwirken , or Non-Linear Learning, the campus academic competition organization as well as their mailing list collegebowl@utdallas.edu . They also have a newsgroup (NOTE: only accessible through the utdallas.edu domain) utd.org.college-bowl
I also created and maintain the Computer Problem Assistance Web Page

I really love classical guitar (and flamenco as well). If I was really really rich and could afford anything I wanted, I was have two things : The first would be an Intergraph TDZ Workstation. The 2nd would be a collection of classical guitars. If I was really really rich and had lots of time, I would play with my Intergraph TDZ Workstation and spend lots of time practicing my guitar. The two things that I used to do to relax was write webpages and practice my guitar. The guitar has kind of gotten sidetracked as I've gotten busier with my life, but I plan to eventually get back to it.

I suppose now that I should include a little about my wife. Well, she's a triple degree recipient for 1) BA in Interdisciplinary Studies, School of General Studies, Univ of Texas @ Dallas 2) BA in Psychology, School of Human Development, Univ of Texas @ Dallas 3) BS in Neuroscience, School of Human Development, Univ of Texas @ Dallas. She already holds an AAS from Richland College, Dallas County Community College District, and is currently in the a Master's program in at SMU. She plans to finish that and go on to get her Doctor of Osteopathy from the UNT Osteopathy s . For those of you who don't know, a DO is the equivalent of an MD, with additional training. In addition to this, she helps her mother raise the 11 children (out of 16 total) who still live in the house.

Return to Matthew's Homepage

last updated: