my name:	Jonathan Kishkunas
contact me:	webmaster@jonkishkunas.com
Jeannine:	Jeannine is my wife! We dated for just under a year during high school and started dating again after I graduated from college. We were married in June of 2006.
schooling:	Bachelors degree in Computer Science, University of Illinois, College of Engineering
employment:	I am a Lead Software Engineer at a small software company headquartered in the suburbs of Chicago
interests:	computers (but you knew that), playing guitar, soccer/rollerblading/running/biking/ultimate frisbee/outdoors, a select few video games (particularly Counter-Strike and Battlefield 2), pool (i.e. billiards, not water), drawing, cats (we have 4!)

NOTE: To my security-conscious audience...most of this information is readily discoverable in the public domain. None of it will help you guess any of my passwords or my answers to password reset questions. :-)

This Web Site

Since its beginnings, the web site has evolved as I learned HTML more and learned how to better design web pages. There is not much here that would be of interest to a random stranger, but I think that anyone who knows me will like the site or will at least find that it is entertaining in instances of extreme boredom. In any case, this is not designed to be overly fancy, professional or purpose-driven. :-)

I made my first web site during my sophomore year of high school (i.e. in 1996). I originally made the web site for two reasons: first, to learn HTML, and, second, to post some of my artwork somewhere besides my room. Currently, I see the web site primarily as something fun to work on, but secondarily as a means of sharing computer information and guitar information (neither of which I have very much of on here, but...). Also, it's nice to have my own domain for email. :-D

Technical Notes

After doing my own grassroots, by-hand web design on this site since its inception, in spring of 2009, I gave in and switched to Microsoft technologies at my web server. I had done some learning and tinkering with ASP.NET and found that many of the things I had arduously written by hand are built into ASP.NET or the free, open-source ASP AJAX Control Toolkit. Combine this with the free Visual Studio Express development environment from Microsoft with its rich feature set, and I had to take the plunge.

My years of experience with raw HTML, JavaScript, PHP, writing my own AJAX in JavaScript and more have helped me understand what is really going on in web design, but modern web development environments have come a long way since 1996 when I started and now offer an immense wealth of capabilities.

See my third-party material page for references to the third-party material that I use.