Michael founded Lisantra Technologies in 2006 amid the wave of professionalizing occuring in the web development industry. He had completed over nine years of honorable service in the US Marine Corps, qualifying as a Middle Eastern linguist. Among his many technology projects, Michael earned a Joint Service Achievement Medal for his technical and translating work while installing a distributed biometric security system in Afghanistan.
Michael earned a BA in International Business from Hawaii Pacific University. After completing his military service in 2005, Michael enrolled in the University of Arizona for a Masters Degree in Near Eastern Studies. However, he found more intellectually fulfilling opportunities in building great software that made life and business easier.
Technical
Naturally, Michael knows several commputer languages as well. He began web programming and server administration in 1998 by building static web sites for his units during deployments.
He progressed to experimenting with Perl and Php3 to create simple interactive pages to highlight unit activities. Michael adopted Coldfusion 4.0 shortly thereafter and began building web-enabled database applications. His growing interest in organizing code and applications to maximize his productivity led him to try various frameworks and software development methodologies.
Michael switched to the ever-capable Php4 in 2001 as a free and open-source alternative to Coldfusion. But, it wasn't until after Php5 introduced its vastly improved Object-Oriented abilities that Michael fully switched over to Php.
Personal
When he's not programming or speaking Arabic, Michael makes time to share his family's interests in outdoor recreation. He also maintains a nostaligic book and software collection from the early internet, fosters a healthy coffee snobbery, tends to his Desert garden and indulges in Italian gourmet cooking.
Further reading
- Mr. Gatto's CV (Pdf)
- Mr. Gatto's CV (plain text)
- I frequent these IRC channels:
