About me ...

This is not a classic CV. This is my reminder of life: where I was and what I have been doing all this time.
The primary question is: What is life? To borrow an idea from Schopenhauer and paraphrase it: a dynamic aggregate driven by necessity in an unknown direction.
The following is my attempt to understand myself through the work I have done so far.

EARLY DAYS

Mechanical engineer

This is my primary profession. As a mechanical engineer, I worked in several positions, mainly maintaining high-performance surface mining machines:

• Excavators 2001–2002
• Welding 2002–2003
• Hydraulics 2003–2008
• Crushing plant 2008–

I value my work through the innovations I bring to particular jobs because I consider myself both an engineer and an artist. One of my colleagues even divides engineers into different types.

Machine maintenance in a mine is based on the “art of improvisation”. I started practicing that art from the very beginning. I did not realize at first that I would reach a fairly high level, but that happened almost naturally.

My first step was a project involving the installation of replacement filters on Russian dragline excavators. Then came countless similar situations, and eventually I found myself enjoying all of it.

The second segment was repairing excavator buckets, where I experimented extensively with welding technology. During the years of maintaining machinery, I discovered an important rule that can be applied whenever a malfunction occurs:

Finally, I moved to a position in preventive maintenance of crushing plants, where I reached, I could say, my maximum in the field of improvisation and in my career in general. I would single out a few projects:

• 1.) Universal Drum Side
• 2.) RSE35M landfill bucket modification
• 3.) The rubber belt changer (in progress)
• 4.) ... and a bunch of tools and auxiliaries

Improvisation in mechanical maintenance is a kind of art.

PROGRAMMER OR DEVELOPER?

Programmer

Throughout my life and work, I have held various positions in mechanical engineering. Through it all, I have tried to improve myself as much as I could.

My passion for programming has followed me throughout my career. Some people change jobs and thereby move forward in their careers; I changed programming languages and progressed in my passion, which was not my profession but a hobby and a daily mental exercise (brain-billing).

At the beginning of my career, I worked in Java, then Delphi (Pascal). After that I switched to C/C++ (Borland Builder), where I felt most comfortable and where I have my fondest memories — ah, that nostalgia.

During that period, many applications were created; I will mention a couple:

1. Hydraulic Calculator A program that received an award at Softpedia
2. RD Explorer A program related to the database of parts and assemblies used at the Tamnava East Field (part of the EPS corporation).

PHP

Then came a short break of ten years. I became deeply involved in intensive CAD work. Later I realized it was not exactly healthy for my brain, so I returned to programming. This time my final choice was PHP (+ MySQL). In this programming language, I rounded off the work from the previous period. Some of my works written in PHP and JavaScript are available on various websites.

PHP is one of the simplest languages to implement and one of the most unforgiving of all the programming languages I have worked with. Although it annoys me quite a lot, I intend to stay with it — at least for now (so much for my PHP faith). I use Linux as the basic operating system on all my computers.

For editing and programming, I used to work in Bluefish. That was my arsenal.

I would like to emphasize a couple of IT projects that I worked on for the machine-maintenance information system in the company where I work.

But time changes everything — and so do I.

Laravel Days

My programs