About Colin

I am a high school senior who has been homeschooled since third grade.  I am the proud ruler of geekdome and the original Penbearer for The Fellowship of The Pen (please don't ask, but check the links page for more info).

Most importantly, I am a disciple of Christ.  I am somebody whose goal is to love and live like Jesus.  He set the perfect example of how I should live.  I am a member of Hill Country Bible Church Southwest (one of many Hill Country Bible Churches around Austin) whose goal is the same as mine.  Its purpose is to reach the city of Austin with the grace, truth and love of Jesus Christ.  I am not a Christian because I was raised that way, although I am blessed to live in a Christian home.  My faith is my own, and I didn't choose Christ, but He chose me.  There are all kinds of things I could say about my restored relationship with God, but all you need to know is that Christ loved me enough to die for me when I deserved death.  Strangely enough, I like to sum that up with lyrics from a Chevelle song called The Clincher:

Could we have known
Never would I
Have helped to nail down
With nothing to gain
Here is the clincher

This should be you

A big part of my relationship with Christ is my discipleship small group or "d-group" that I have been stuck with for two years now.  These guys are a huge part of my life, and have helped to encourage huge growth in my faith.  Because of this group of guys I have a much stronger desire to follow Christ my whole life, and have learned countless things about my savior and what it means to be on mission for God.  We also had some fun in the meantime... a lot of it.  If you want to learn a bit more of the lighter side of our d-group, check out this site: http://thefellowship.hemphill.us

When I started homeschooling in third grade, I did everything at home for at least a year.  After that I joined co-ops to take classes that my mom couldn't teach.  Over the years I have been to several locations like CCI (Classical Christian Institute), CCPA (Christian College Preparatory Academy) and One Day Academy.  For the past two years I have been taking dual credit classes at Austin Community College to get the credit that I need for high school as well as general requirement classes that I won't have to take in college.  My passion is audio engineering.  I have an enormous love of anything to do with acoustics, mixers, speakers, amplifiers, studios, etc.  For about six years I have been running live sound at church with the youth bands, and have been on the adult sound team for two.  I am good friends with the guys from The Stillpoint Band, the worship team at our church and because of my interaction with them I have had an amazing opportunity to turn my passion for sound into a career path.  I was able to be an engineer for their second album, for(nights&&StarrySkies) and to see the songs that I had heard on stage for so long turn into professional recordings.  I have spent a lot of time in the studio and at home recording music.  Being with so many awesome musicians and other audio engineers has been incredibly helpful in learning all about the music business and music performance.  I have currently been accepted at Belmont University in Nashville and Bowling Green State University in Ohio.  Although I haven't made a final decision, I am currently working on scholarships and have a good idea of where I would like to study audio engineering.  Again, this is something I could devote an entire website to... so I will leave it at that.

A majority of my passion for audio engineering comes from my love of music.  I took piano for about five years but got pretty burned out on it.  A while afterwards I picked up a chord book and my dad's 1974 Telecaster and soon fell in love with playing the guitar.  I have been playing for about three years and I play in both the High School and the Jr. High bands at church.  I just recently started playing the drums with a very clear intention of learning only enough to be able to play along with anybody if it ever became necessary.  I would say I was very successful in accomplishing that goal, and while I hardly ever practice, I am good enough to just be able to jam and play some decent fills.  I think that being a musician is extremely beneficial to my audio engineering career.  It has helped tune my ears to recognize playing styles and instrument tones so that hopefully I can bring out the best sound in a recording or live show.

Hmm... some other interesting things about me.  I have four years of speech and debate experience, and have placed in my region (Texas and four surrounding states) every year for Team Policy Debate.  I love to travel, and my grandma takes us all over the world.  At four years old I went to Barbados, and in later years I visited Alaska, Hawaii, Mexico, several places in the Caribbean and Central America and various other states.  The highlight was when I was eight years old and my grandma took us to Antarctica because it was the only continent she had never been too.  Yes, I walked with the penguins and seals in the Antarctic Peninsula, rode Zodiacs and a small icebreaker ship, saw some incredible sights and sailed over the most ridiculous stretch of ocean I have ever experienced (The Drake Passage is not fun to cross).  Anyway, that's another story too.  A part of my heart is in Morelia, Mexico where I did Vacation Bible School, sports and construction ministries with a team from my youth group.  In July of 2008 I went to help final construction of a church plant there, made some amazing new friends, grew closer to the people I went with, and had the opportunity to share my testimony with several groups of people throughout the week.  I guess one other thing to mention is that when I was eleven I took my first pilot's lesson and had complete control of the takeoff, flight and landing for half an hour.  The problem was that I was too short to see over the instruments.  I haven't put any more time or money into that since then, but I do hope to get my pilot's license once I have a little time for the lessons.

Another brief interesting thing to mention is my obsession with the National Honor Points Society and using the "Honor Points" system.  My youth pastor, Jake Box, left a lasting impression on me in many ways.  Not only was he a huge spiritual mentor, teacher and friend in my life, but he had some awesome and often hilarious stories that I will never forget.  Most of these funny stories came from a system of "honor points" that he and his college roomates invented years ago to get each other to do stupid things.  I became a huge fan of the system, to the point where I established the National Honor Points Society (NHPS), where you can see the official rules and register as an official user of the system.  I explain that in detail on the website: http://www.honorpoints.net.tc

I seem to have some stories to tell.  I could mention meeting bands like The Afters, Kutless and Switchfoot (including getting my Ovation signed by the whole band), and wearing pizza hats to a Brian Regan show and making him totally lose it, but I will find a way to get detailed about things like that sometime soon.  I'm hoping that I can work the news section of this site so that I can really write about some of the things I mentioned here.  Until then, talk to me about them if I have met you and email me if I haven't!

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