Hello All,
I joined this place at firefytr's request after going on a massive posting binge over at Mr.Excel and apparently demonstrating some sort of relevant ability. I only started using VBA in late 2004, but was quickly hooked on it's ease of use and wide range of applicability. I have tried to consistently improve my skill at it, and since that time have also become highly proficient at SQL, functional in VB, .net, C# and some other applications.
My skill pales in comparison with nearly everyone on this forum, but i love this place. Haven't been around much since spring due to work, but I love to figure out problems and offer solutions where I can. May not be the best or most elegant but they sometimes work out.
I have been with a major bank for about 3 years. After working as a consultant on a special project, another department had heard about me and actually created a position which was ideal for my style of work and personality. The department had a terrible need for someone who could bridge the gap between fundamental credit policy knowledge, business experience and leveraging technology to improve a wide variety of aspects of the departments operations. Honestly, my boss was taking a risk at the time as no other dept had done this.
Since starting I have programmatically eliminated about 4 jobs and several hundred monthly hours of manual labor by leveraging a SQL server and my knowledge of Excel. The fact that I accomplished this with no formal training, and in ways that their actual IT departments couldn't is nothing short of "wierd" in my book, but has given me quite a nice niche.
I pick my projects, contribute to high level policy discussions, and everything I get to do has a major impact on things are done behind the scenes. It is pretty cool, but very demanding. Now I primarily act as the DBA for our own SQL server (with 700 GB of data and 30 database), 90% of which I designed and created from scratch and led to the massive reduction in labor needs of our department. I also develop small relatively purpose driven applications to automate tasks.
Anyways, this place calls me an expert or something, but that is based on my post count, which admittedly is high due to the need to correct most of my own mistakes when attempting to help people. :banghead:
Anyways, this place offers so much more than most other sites...it is hard not to like it.
Edit: In the ultimate twist, I had to edit this post to fix a mistake!
