About

I have always loved computers. The first computer I remember playing with was my dad’s when I was six. It ran Windows 3.1. I used it to play around in MS Paint. My dad always warned me to turn off the monitor when I wasn’t using it so it wouldn’t get the dreaded screen burn.

I wasn’t aware that the Internet existed until I went to the Franklin Institute when I was 8 or 9. They had an exhibit about the World Wide Web and I could browse the Internet at a kiosk with Netscape Navigator. Shortly after, my mom got us a second Gateway desktop running Windows 98 SE and a subscription to AOL.

I became interested in programming at 12 because I wanted to make my own AOL prog. I thought I had to buy software to become a programmer - I couldn’t afford the 500 dollars needed for Visual Studio, and I thought my parents would never buy it for me, so I sadly forgot about learning how to program. But around 14 I learned about Linux, and I found Eric S. Raymond’s classic How to Become a Hacker FAQ and my passion exploded. I spent most of my teenage years installing and running different *nix systems and keeping my programming books under my pillow so I could read them before I went to sleep.

At 18 I enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania, excited to study computer science uninhibited by other subjects. That didn’t happen. I gave up my dream of coding for a living around 20, but I did a few websites. It wasn’t until April 2014 when I went to Rails Girls and met a developer who inspired me try it again as a profession.

Have you ever met someone who just knew that they were going to marry their spouse when they first met? My love of computers is kind of like that. There was no question in my mind that I would do anything different.

Outside of computers, I knit and sometimes garden. I love all sub genres of electronic music. I am a proud former homeschooler.

That’s cool and all… but what’s with your name?

My name is pronounced jel-see. Think of a jellyfish swimming in the sea. You know, it only took me 25 years to come up with that. As you can probably imagine, this has been my life’s theme song: