I recently got a comment from a reader thanking me for my blog content (which was nice) and then tweaking me because he couldn't find my name until he started reading the comments. Grrr... What's wrong man? Can't you see it there in the fine print of the copyright text at the very bottom of the sidebar?

OK, maybe that's not so obvious, and I suppose that my readership has grown a little beyond my immediate friends and colleagues. For those of you who are interested, here is the obligatory bio page.

On April 10, 1975, I was born Dustin Russell Campbell in Findlay, Ohio and spent my early years on a steady diet of Star Wars and text adventure games. Fortunately, my father always had a deep interest in computers so there was always some sort of machine around the house. In fact, we owned one of the first TRS-80 Model I machines in the city. MY first computer was a Commodore VIC-20 (eventually graduating to a Commodore 64) on which I became interested in programming (in BASIC of course!). We purcharsed our first PC in 1986-87, and I immediately fell in love.

Junior high and high school were turbulant times for me. In 1987, for the same reasons that most boys do (chicks and dough), I took up guitar. To my mother's shame, I gravitated towards hard rock and heavy metal. I was always that kid in the back of the honors classes with long hair and a Metallica T-shirt. You know the one. (I have pictures, but I'm not showing.) However, it wasn't always black T-shirts and loud guitars. I also played the viola from fourth grade all the way into college. So, even throughout a period of heavy teenage angst, I found enjoyment in many other styles of music (e.g. classical, jazz, etc.).

After high school, I had two choices of career to pursue in college: computer science or music. At the time, music was more attractive (chicks and dough, remember?), so I entered Bowling Green State University in the Fall of 1993 as a Guitar Performance major with a jazz emphasis. That's right dear readers, I went to college for jazz guitar and studied with the masterful Chris Buzzelli. It might surprise some of you to learn that, at BGSU, this is one of the hardest music degrees to get. In fact, out of the 16 guitarists that started with me, I was the only one to earn the degree.

Throughout college, I made ends meet by doing various odd jobs (programming, support, whatever...) for my father's fledgling software firm. He eventually converted me from Visual Basic 6 to Borland Delphi, with which I learned proper object-oriented programming skills.

In August of 1998, I finally graduated with my Bachelor's in Guitar Performance and had no idea what I wanted to do. Programming was certainly a draw, but I wasn't particularly interested in joining the Geek Squad just yet. So, I re-enrolled at BGSU as a graduate student in Guitar Performance. To help pay my way, I took a graduate assistantship as the College of Musical Arts' web developer. I stayed in school for one more year and then dropped out because my interests had shifted. I just didn't have the same passion for music that I had for computers and technology. (It turned out that "chicks and dough" was a myth.)

After dropping out, I stayed on as the web developer and continued programming for my father. It wasn't glorious, but it was fun and I earned a reasonable living.

Eventually, I started using CodeRush for Delphi and developed a friendship with its creator, Mark Miller. In the Spring of 2003, Mark contacted me and asked if I had been working in C# yet. He further elaborated that he was working on a super-secret project and needed me to join him in Las Vegas for a couple of weeks. At this time, I had only been married for a few months, but my trophy wife was gracious and told me to go. When I arrived in Vegas, Mark informed me that Developer Express was aquiring his company and all of his products, including CodeRush. We would be working on the new CodeRush for Visual Studio. I continued on the product as an independent contractor throughout the summer and joined Developer Express as a full-time employee in September of 2003.

Currently, I am the Lead Developer for the IDE Tools division at Developer Express. My responsibilities include much of the low-level plumbing for the DXCore, CodeRush and Refactor! products. I am passionate about becoming a better developer and spend a great deal of my free time learning new technologies. In addition, I enjoy speaking on a variety topics whenever I can get anyone to sit still long enough. For my contributions to the C# community, I was awarded with Microsoft MVP status in April of 2007.

There's more to come—of that I'm certain.