All About Rich

Richard and Lori Hughes

A lot of my inspiration to this website started when I was in high school. For the first two years of high school, I played in the school’s marching band. Within the first three months of freshman year, I met my school sweetheart (now wife) Lori. I also learned how to read music.

When I was a sophomore, I took a MIDI class, where I learned how to compose music on the computer. Music was fun, but I didn’t think it was going to be my life. So in junior year, I dropped out of the high school band in order to pursue computer programming instead. When I was a senior, I was introduced to computer networking while taking Cisco CCNA classes.

After graduating high school in 2000, I went on to a junior college to study computer networking and computer repair. I was also taking electronic classes as well, and was on the fence between the two fields.  In 2004, I received a CompTIA A+ certified PC technician Certificate. By 2006, I received my Bachelor’s Degree in Information System Security from Westwood College.

While going to college, I worked at a few convenient stores and finally landed a job at a big-box computer retail store as a service writer. While working as a service writer, I interacted with the customers as they describe the problems they were having with their computers and relaying the information to the technicians. I was also trained on current products and services that were offered to the small office/home office environment.

One day, I was watching Lori (my fiancé at the time) handwriting in her checkbook’s registrar and using a calculator to figure out her balance. I thought it was ridiculous that we were not using a computer to do this. So, while I was taking a database class, I decided to create a Microsoft Access database to do all the calculations for us. We liked and used it so much, I later decided to create a stand-alone program from the ground up that will do the same thing with more features (which later became The Money Shepherd.)

After I graduated college, Lori and I got married and moved away from where we were living so that we were closer to her job. I did a few overnight computer system installs with banks and store outlets, and worked on three big rollout projects with a big insurance company. In between the rollout projects, I worked for a software company for a couple of months as an IT assistant. While working there, I regained my inspiration to program. I taught myself Visual Basic and wrote an inventory program on a hand scanner for a rack repair company.