I have nurtured a dream for some 20 odd years but, until this year, I never really had the time, peace of mind and energy all coinciding to do all that much about my dream.
After about 15 of those 20 years, I had an ever-stronger instinct that the key to achieving my dream lay with databases.
I then read and read and read about all sorts of different databases and slowly inched my way forwards but all along I knew that I was always "tapping around in the dark".
I knew that I needed some "expert, one-on-one mentoring help" to bridge the gap between all the theory that I had read about and the actual practice, where things happen and projects take shape and, ultimately, take off: nothing that I had read showed me a clear path to finally achieving my particular, rather complex dream.
I then looked for just the right person to "show me the way" and, after a great deal of searching, a very kind person recommended Kerrin to me.
When we met at my home, I discovered that Kerrin had exactly the skillset and patient mentoring personality that I was looking for and, over the last ten months of more or less weekly contacts, we have made quite phenomenal progress, from what, in my case, was very much a standing start, as I had no hands-on database or coding experience.
The key to our achieving success was linking the right sort of databases with the right sort of "applications".
That required a huge breadth of database and coding experience and skills in the mentor in order to really understand my requirements, translate them into correctly thought-through task-lists and then get the prototype databases and applications up-and-running.
Choosing the two ideal database programs was a very important initial step but the really clever bit (and "All praise to Kerrin" here) was getting all the thinking and all the coding right to (a) ensure highly disciplined data-entry and then (b) return all the query results in just the right way.
Each time I made yet another request to improve the databases and/or the applications, Kerrin had the skills to "make it happen". Even when it was really very difficult indeed, he never once gave up, never once lost his temper and never once threatened to throw the towel in.
Loyalty, steadfastness and trustworthiness are all very important to me.
What impressed me most of all was not just how Kerrin took up my challenge of learning MongoDB, a document-oriented NoSQL database program that he learned essentially "just for me", but also how extraordinarily quickly he "mastered it", at least as far as my immediate requirements went.
I asked you right at the beginning, Kerrin, not just to "give me a fish but rather to teach me to fish" and you have been a quite wonderfully patient and clear teacher and mentor in all things to do with databases and coding. I really do look forward to working with you for many years to come, as I have so much more to learn from you and especially in the area of our next major project, building a truly "responsive" and very large website, with a blog and a forum.
Finally, I must mention that the combination of TeamViewer and Skype has been a perfect method for bridging the just under 20-mile distance between where we both live: by using both of these two bits of (currently free) software at the same time, both of us have the ability of "controlling the mouse" and, astonishingly, with no perceptible lag-effect either. This "dual control of the mouse" actually makes distance-learning "better" (as more efficient) than sitting side-by-side.
After 10 months, I would have no hesitation whatsoever in recommending Kerrin to people who are looking for someone who can "really make things happen" wherever databases and coding come together.
Kerrin's magic is that he manages to keep the novice's enthusiasm up whilst maintaining proper database and coding disciplines albeit without ever dousing the novice's initial urge to just keep on learning and keep on getting better.
You will be in very good hands with Kerrin so my recommendation would be to "Go for it!".
Just make sure, please, that you leave him with enough time and energy left over for me!
"CH"