1983: Patrick R. Jarrett (that’s me) was born in Atlanta GA. Big baby, 2nd largest the hospital had delivered at that point.
1986: Younger sister born, bringing sibling count to five. Family moves from Atlanta to Kansas City, KS with dad’s job.
1989: Moved from KC to Orlando, FL.
1993: Best friend, George, died from a rare heart malformation, left a lasting effect on personality, caused me to withdraw and become quite introverted for many years.
1995: Began exploring the Internet and playing with web design in HTML 1, I had no clue what exactly I was beginning to explore.
1997: Part of the first web design class in my middle school, helping manage the school’s website and continue to explore new realms in web design — like the blink tag, and using animated gifs! Also this is the year when I first spent over 100 hours in one month signed on via our dial up service, the parents were not amused.
1998: Entered high school at Edgewater High School as part of their “Engineering, Science and Technology” magnet. I had begun to come out of my shell and also got drafted into playing both Football and rowing on the Crew team.
1999: Played Football again, rowed again, did so-so in school. Had my first online “blog” or a regularly updated website, all done manually with html in Notepad! Saw The Matrix seven times in theatres. Fell asleep the last time I saw it in theatres.
2000: Stopped playing football and rowing, began working more and doing more webdesign.
2001: Still more web design as I grew deeper and deeper into the Internet, while the world changed all around me.
2002: Graduated high school and was accepted to Georgia Tech as a Computer Science major. Mom’s health had held steady but began to require more trips to Houston for treatment. In my freshman year, I try to join Theta Xi, a Christian fraternity on campus, with only 2 weeks left in my trial membership I get blackballed. A major surprise and a shocking event which affected me deeply as well.
2003: Grades not that great, beginning to realize my love is with web design and development, not the heavy lifting computer science. But I’m stubborn and do my best to push through.
2004: Mom’s health continues to hold steady but we’ve all been prepared for the eventual decline which will require treatment. I push on with school, building friendships and trying to survive college.
2005: First year volunteering with Dragon*Con. Later GT and I part ways after the fall semester. I work for the Georgia Supreme Court Clerk’s Cooperative Authority.
2006: Mom’s health takes a decline and life comes to a point where I am faced with a big decision.i decide to leave Atlanta and return to Orlando. In May I return to Orlando to be with family and be near to mom before she has to leave for a bone-marrow transplant in Houston. In October, K and I begin seeing each other. Begin working for SAK Comedy Lab as their house manager.
2007: Perhaps worst year ever. My mom passes away. I get violently ill on Christmas Eve (revenge of Montezuma sort of ill.) I’m so amazingly glad this year is done. The only real big things were, one year with K, the founding of ManaNation and working with Databanq Media. Also have Mattie, the cutest dog ever join the family.
2008: Life goes on! I was let go from Databanq and three weeks later landed at MindComet as “Senior Software Developer.” Performing at SAK Comedy Lab, at least monthly, as part of the Tuesday night ‘Lab Rats’ show.
2009: Joined CoolStuffInc.com as their ‘New Media Director.’ Continued doing ManaNation. Proposed to Katie and got engaged.
2010: Get married! Work at an amazing company doing awesome things.
2011: Lose weight, getting out of debt. Merge ManaNation.com into GatheringMagic.com. Accept a job with Wizards of the Coast as ‘Content Specialist’ and move from Orlando, FL to Seattle, WA with my wife and our two dogs (yup, corner to corner).
2012: Raise DailyMTG.com to new heights and destroy my boss’s expectations at work. Return to a weight which merits bragging about for the right reasons.
…and so much more