Arp's blog

Everything I know about building websites, I taught myself.  Well - almost everything.  I took one class in multimedia for the web (only because my old job paid for it), and learned a couple of things.  But I stopped taking the class after a month when I realized the instructor was just following a book - so why waste time going to a class when I could do it myself?   Read more  

I believe that self-determination and self-education go hand-in-hand.  The quest to improve my life was driven by opening my mind and learning as much as possible.  I highly advocate reading a wide breadth of material with a critical eye.  Small shifts in knowledge and perception lead to the big changes that seem to happen overnight.     Read more  

I live in Costa Rica and work from home.  Both are lifestyle choices that I made and worked toward for the last 5 years.  Our house here in the tropics has nearly 3 acres with orange, mango, lime, avocado & cashew trees aplenty.  I get to spend more time with my family.  And thanks to cost-of-living arbitrage, I work less - my rent here is 1/4 the mortgage I had in the USA.  The 60 hour weeks I worked to get here are long, long gone :-)    Read more