Nick Curran

I’m a mid-thirties, Irish-Colombian Minnesotan, born in Edina and raised in the suburbs of West Saint Paul and Mendota Heights. My early education was found in the finest public schools of the area. After high school, I studied at the University of Minnesota, graduating from their Carlson School of Management with a BSB in MIS.

Since then, I’ve been employed as a software engineer in a wide variety of industries. For the last five years, this has meant Novus Print Media, a marketing company that specializes in targeted placement of print and online advertising.

In June of 2004, I had the luck of meeting The Amazing Amy K after an escalating exchange of overly clever emails sent via a seedy internet dating site. I was immediately enchanted, but she told me she wanted to be friends. After I declined that offer and let her stew about it for a couple of months, she deigned to meet me again, and this time I did the enchanting. We’ve been together ever since, and we married on November 11, 2006.

After a couple of years snuggled in my little Stevens Square condo (always for sale, ahem), we sought a bit more space, so we moved southwest to the Armatage neighborhood of Minneapolis. We miss our quick walks to downtown, but the proximity to Minnehaha Creek and the lakes makes our beagle Maeby quite happy.

TCOB

People often ask me what TCOB stands for: “Taking Care of Business,” I tell them. I registered tcob.com on February 20, 2000 while watching a Seinfeld rerun after work. Kramer was up to his usual shenanigans, and Jerry asked him what he was doing. “TCB,” was the response. Against his better judgment, Jerry asked what that stood for, and Kramer proudly responded, “Takin’ Care of Business.” I had wanted a catchy domain name of my own for a while, and tcb.com sounded perfect. I looked it up, certain that it would be taken. Of course it was, but I decided to try tcob.com… just in case.

Amazingly, it was available. I jumped on it. At the time, four-letter domain names were impossible to find. And they continue to be, especially if they might stand for something memorable. Certainly any common word or acronym is taken.

TCB was Elvis’s motto, and who can forget the classic BTO tune/Office Depot advertising campaign? Anyway, I like having tcob.com. People have expressed interest in purchasing it over the years, while everything is certainly for sale, I have yet to hear a worthy offer.

tcob.com

This site resides at the wonderful Dreamhost, thanks to Patrick’s recommendation. They have fantastic service (super fast and polite), a really nice control panel for your site, seemingly 100% uptime, and the widest set of features and access that I’ve seen - all very clean and well put together. I had been on Dominet for a while, but their service varied and uptime was spotty. I had a decent experience at GoDaddy as well, but they don’t have nearly the level of access or features that Dreamhost does, and their control panel sucked. Dreamhost isn’t always the fastest, but it’s certainly fast enough. Oh, and they’re green, too!

I use WordPress to run the web site, my favorite blogging tool by far. It has a great UI, it’s really easy to use and setup, it’s open source, and it has a huge community of users and developers, so it’s always improving. I’ve tried MovableType, which was pretty good if a bit slow and not as elegant as WordPress; to be fair, I’m sure it’s improved a ton since I used it last. I’ve also tried Blosxom - yuck. OK, it was cool at the time, but it was not fun to use and didn’t seem to see much support or development.

The WordPress theme you’re currently enjoying was written by yours truly, inspired by designs I had seen around the web and liked a lot. It’s meant to look clean and clear for the reader and easy to maintain for me. Where you see any JavaScript in action, I’m probably using the excellent Prototype and Scriptaculous libraries.

The Infamous Nick Curran

A Google search for me might lead you to tcob.com, or it might lead to other, less savory characters. Turns out that the famous Nick Curran was also fathered by a Mike Curran.

The strangeness don’t end there. Did you know that the main (male) character in the American classic Basic Instinct was also named Nick Curran?

All coincidences? Or is there some sort of deeper meaning? I like to think so.