My name is Chris Juszak (some people know me as CJ) and this website is my blog to save and share information, pictures, etc..
I was born in southern California and lived in various cities in San Diego County (mostly Escondido and Poway) until I was 14, when I moved to northern California with my mom and my two younger brothers. I lived in the small towns of Oak Run and Shingletown in Shasta County until I was 19. I attended classes at Shasta College in Redding until I moved to attend classes at California State University, Chico. In Chico, I earned a Bachelors of Science degree in Computer Science and met Laurie, who I later married. Laurie is originally from Santa Cruz County. After college, Laurie and I moved to Ventura County where I worked as a computer scientist. Laurie worked for a bank during those years. After three year in Ventura County, we moved to Portsmouth, Virginia where I started working for government contractors in various software engineering related roles. While living in Virginia, Laurie worked at a doctor’s office. After four years in Virginia, we moved to Fort Collins, Colorado. Laurie and I had a son together named Lee and I earned my Masters of Engineering degree in Systems Engineering from Colorado State University.
Lee is a teenager in his last year of middle school and some of his hobbies include technical projects (coding), geocaching, and offroading with me – even though he’s a bit too young to drive. Laurie works at a nearby elementary school and also spends time volunteering with nonprofit organizations. I’m still working for government contractors in an engineering role and I’ve had various personal hobbies and interests over the years, ranging from software and electronics projects to woodworking. I also like to get outdoors as much as I can (hiking, offroading, mountain biking, and kayaking). Although, I do none of these things nearly as often as I want to! We also have a cabin in Red Feather Lakes that we spend a lot of time at, which serves as a great “get away location” and base for getting out into the Rocky Mountains for hiking, offroading, etc.
We plan to stay in Colorado at least until Lee finishes high school. However, we’re considering “snowbird options”, migrating between Fort Collins and some place warmer as part of our future adventures.
I use this website as a way to collect notes and share information about some of the activities I’m involved with. Some of my blogs will look technical in nature if your not a software programmer. A lot of those notes are just for me to refer back to later, but I hope others might find them useful. Other blogs will simply contain family pictures or videos of whatever we have been up to recently.
I also use Facebook occasionally and have used other social media sites or Internet forums to collect and share information, but I’m generally not very active on those platforms. I find the use of those platforms to be a careful balance between collecting valuable information that is helpful in my life, sharing pictures and video for family, avoiding troll bait, and and not wasting time in general since time has always been a precious thing to me!
For some information about my work life, please see my résumé page.