Paged

About

About Jon Holato

I came into this world on October 7, 1982, the same day that Cats premiered in New York City. My youth was spent in various cities within Orange County, California. I moved to New Jersey in 2003 for higher education and graduated from Seton Hall University in December 2005 with a major in communication and minor in diplomacy and international relations. After college I worked as a search marketing analyst for an interactive marketing agency for a little over a year. Currently I still live in New Jersey, but spend the majority of my time working in New York City for one of the best companies in the world.

Points of Interest

I have always been a Christian, having attended a Lutheran school through First Grade, but have become a particularly adamant and sagacious Catholic since completing my communion and confirmation in 2005. As a result, I have a firm set of morals and values that I live my life according to, however I do not seek to self-impose them on anyone.

Last year I was blessed with meeting my soul mate, my other half, the love of my life Carin. She is the most amazing person I have ever met and I am continuously becoming a better all-around individual as a result of the things she has taught me about life and myself.

The single greatest experience of my life occurred during the Summer of 2002, when I studied abroad in Paris. Up until that point my life was essentially a sheltered one, restricted to the uncultured and self-centered lifestyle of middle-class America. Living in a foreign country out of my element taught me about the world that exists outside of the United States, and was really the first time I had no parental or guardian authority to watch over me. Thus, I consider this time to be when I officially made the transition from youth to adult, not in body, but in mind and spirit.

Quick Facts

I am the fastest two-finger typer you will ever encounter.
Sushi does my taste buds dirty more than anything else.
I have been with every major US cell phone carrier — they all suck.
Bungee jumping is the ~~scariest~~ most exciting thing I’ve ever done.
I was one of the first people in New Jersey with an iPhone.

Geek Stats

Computers: 4 — 3 laptops (MacBook, Sony Vaio, Dell Latitude), 1 desktop PC
OS: Mac OS X, Fedora, Windows XP
Browser: Firefox, Safari
IM Client: iChat, Trillian, Pidgin
E-mail: Gmail
Programming Language: PHP
Text Editor: Emacs
IDE: PHP Designer Pro 2005
RSS: Google Reader
Gaming Console: Xbox 360, Wii
Mobile Phone: iPhone

Countries I’ve Traveled to

Canada
Mexico
French Polynesia
Hong Kong
Indonesia
France

The following is a list of some of the social web sites that I have accounts at and frequent often.

Del.icio.us

I can’t get enough of this site. As someone who builds up hundreds of bookmarks and can never find what they’re looking for Del.icio.us is a blessing. Lately I’ve also been using it in the work environment, as being obscenely organized helps to increase productivity.

Facebook

I’ve been an active member of Facebook since Seton Hall got it over Thanksgiving break 2004, and everyone at my school stopped sleeping and going to class just to see how many friends they could get. I don’t go on as much as I used to since graduating and working now, but its still a handy tool to maintain contact with old friends.

Flickr

Still relatively new to Flickr, but am nothing but amazed with what I’ve seen from it so far. Not to mention the spin-off of 3rd party hacks/software that add more functionality. Notably, the FlickrRSS wordpress plugin I use.

Last.fm

I must confess to being even more of a newbie to Last.fm than I am to Flickr. Nonetheless, what an amazing site from what I’ve experience so far, thanks to my co-workers for getting me going on this one. Here’s one of their auto-generated image chart playlists with a design I created using their tool. (The last.fm rss feed in the footer is probably more up to date)

The ultimate tool for business networking as it allows you to keep track of everything a prospective employer would be interested in. Its basically the 6 degrees of separation way of how to find employment.

MyBlogLog

MyBlogLog is THE social networking community for bloggers. In addition, they provide stats and a recent visitors widget that has become very popular throughout the Web.