Hello to everyone reading this! Since we have decided to start over with the AllThingsTech blog, I felt it was only appropriate if I made a little introduction post. Just a few words to let all of you know a little bit about who I am and what I do. So what do you say, shall we get started?
As many of you likely know, but for those that don’t, I’m one of the co-admins of the AllThingsTech.social Mastodon instance along with Kyle Reddoch. AllThingsTech has been around for almost a year now. However, this post isn’t about our instance, it’s to give you some insight into who I am.
I guess I could start with the basics. I’m a 52 year old husband to an amazing wife living in Winston Salem, NC and am the proud parent of two awesome cats named Bess(15 years old) and Kumquat(4 years old). I was born in Merritt Island, FL, right across from the NASA launch pads, but only lived there until I was about 2 – 3 years old. My parents moved to Houston, TX for the oil boom that was just getting started and to be in a much larger city than Cocoa Beach, FL which is where we were living.
I spent all of my childhood and teenage years in Houston. I graduated high school at Klein Oak High School, the same school that Jim Parsons from Big Bang Theory attended. He and I even attended school together for 2 years, as I graduated in 1989 and he graduated in 1991. Small world, wouldn’t you say?
After high school, I went on to do adult things and never attended college. I was sick and tired of school by the time I finished high school and wanted to move on in life. Shortly after graduation, myself and my parents would move back to Florida, this time in south Florida around Boynton Beach.
My parents would end up getting divorced shortly afterwards and my dad and I would end up moving back to Houston in 1991/1992 as we felt that’s where “home” was. Plus, he was approached by his former boss at McCauley Lumber Co in Tomball, TX to come back to work. A deal that we couldn’t pass up.
We would stay in Houston and the surrounding areas until September 2007, which Pops and I would then move to Rome, GA. A place I didn’t really want to be, but it’s where life took us. I ended up meeting what is now my wife in 2013 and we’d get married in 2018.
In January 2022, the wife and I would move to Winston Salem, NC which is where I am located at now. Absolutely enjoying this place as it feels like this is where I belong.
Let’s go back to the year 2015, back when Google+ was one of the big social media platforms of the time. I stumbled across a post by Derek Ross, who I had followed for years, that he had shared by Kevin Barry, the developer of Nova Launcher. Kevin was looking to hire someone to replace his current customer support person who was moving on to other things.
I felt I didn’t have much of a shot at this job, but I decided to send an email Kevin’s way. As they say, you can hit your shot if you never shoot. Almost immediately, to my surprise, Kevin replied to me and wanted to setup a Google Hangouts meeting between us.
Two days later we had a meeting and Kevin ended up hiring me on the spot. Little did I know how much my life would change because of this.
So what is Nova Launcher you ask? It’s the largest and most popular home screen replacement app in the Google Play Store and has been pretty much since the day it was launched publicly on December 13th, 2011. Twelve plus years later, it’s still the most popular launcher in the Play Store.
Now you’re asking, what do I do for Nova Launcher? I am the customer support manager who handles all customer support via email and I also own and run the official, verified Discord server that currently has almost 77,000 members at the time of this writing.
I do other things as well since Nova Launcher was acquired by Branch Metrics back in 2022, but my job is mostly as I stated above. I’m still the only person who answers emails as well as a bit of social media stuff, mostly on Mastodon where we have a Nova Launcher account.
Outside of the work stuff, I’m an avid lover and fan of technology of any and all sorts. Since I work for an Android app, I obviously have a love for Android mobile devices, but I also use Apple’s iOS very regularly as well. I love to play video games and just love to absorb news and information about anything tech related. If it beeps or it goes boop, then my curiosity is piqued.
I’m also one who loves music. Since I work from home, I’m at my PC 12+ hours per day and while I’m at the PC, there is almost always music playing from my speakers. It’s simply a part of life and who I am.
While I’m certainly no professional, I love to take random photos. I take a lot of photos of my cats but also love to try and capture a great sunrise or sunset if and when I can. But you’ll find I snap pictures of all sorts of stuff, even the food the wife and I experience here around Winston Salem.
I’m sure there are many other things I could talk about, but as this post is getting a bit longer than expected, I should wrap it up here. With that said, if you are interested in knowing more about me, you can always reach out to me via Mastodon where I spend a lot of my time during the day posting random stuff of all kinds. My Mastodon account is here: Cliff Wade. I’d love to answer any questions you might have or go into more details about anything I mentioned here.
