Personal Life

My name is Daniel "Ketterer" Norton! My last name is legally Norton, but I grew up in a household of Ketterer's, so I prefer Ketterer!

I grew up in the small town of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Or at least it was small when I was growing up there, but it's becoming quite the tech hub these days.

In Chattanooga, I experienced so much wonderful life, and I gained a strong appreciation for the outdoors, living a playful and fun life, expressing my creativity through fashion, creating and enjoying art, and listening to great music. Because Chattanooga sits perfectly between both Nashville and Atlanta, I was always a daytrip away from amazing music, art, and food, but I got the privilege of living in a city without traffic.

I was working as a truck driver for a small produce company in Chattanooga in 2021 when I recieved an offer to work for a much larger corporation in Atlanta. I took the job and very quickly realized that truck driving was not anywhere near as glamorous inside a city that is brimming with traffic all day. But, by the time I decided I didn't want that career path, I had already developed a severe love-hate relationship with Atlanta that would keep me loving my friends here, eating good food, and always being terrified that someone is going to wreck into me on the interstate.

I now work at a church in midtown called Grace Midtown where I have managed the property and facilites for 2 years. Through this job, I get to serve and engage with our community in very heartwarming and rewarding ways.

I'm currently engaged to my fiancé, Claire, who is the wind beneath my sails. She is actually the one who motivated me to pursue tech as a career. We're getting married on October 5th, 2024, and it's my goal to have a new job in the field I'm most passionate about by that day!

Skills

I've been tinkering with code since before I even really knew that's what I was doing. As most people my age, that started with MySpace. Not only did I do the normal HTML copy/paste for a new wallpaper, but I also sought out ways to customize my music player, and I remember even changing the color of the music player on my own. At the time I had no idea that I was familiarizing myself with code.

Fast-forward a few years, and I was doing photography as a side hustle. I needed a website to market myself with, so I used squarespace and built out a portfolio. But I remember being frustrated that I couldn't get the photo reel to display the way I wanted it to. So I googled a bit, found some help on stackoverflow and hard coded my own photo reel into my portfolio website. This helped me realize that I actually enjoyed chanelling my creativity through websites. From that point on, I helped a few of my friends develop websites for their businesses, and even hard coded a few elements here and there. But I still had no concept of the fact that I was engaging with code. If you asked me at the time, I would have just explained that I manipulating squarespace templates.

In October 2022, I found myself at an impass. I was 27 years old and still hadn't quite found my career niche. I knew that I was good at working with my hands, building things, and making art, but I couldn't quite nail down how to make those things work together in a career. So, for the sake of being stable for my fiancé, I decided to do what I thought was a huge compromise at the time. I began taking classes with The Odin Project. Up to this point, all I understood about coding was that it was a different language, somehow it made computers work, and people got paid a lot of money to use their coding skills. But boy, was I in for a surprise.

I discovered that coding was actually the perfect amalgamation of everything I enjoyed doing. It was the way to see a vision, build it, and make it beautiful. So, I studied with The Odin Project for nearly a year. I learned the foundations of HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. While doing that, I also took an Udemy course to learn Python. But the problem I kept running into was that when I would try to build a project from scratch, the CSS and HTML were things I could make work, but I couldn't quite grasp JavaScript. After a year of having failed projects, I decided I might need a more structural approach to learning these skills, so I enrolled in CodingDojos 16 week accelerated bootcamp.

In this bootcamp I have learned how to use HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, Python, and how to utilize APIs and AJAX. I'm still definitely a junior developer, but I'm hoping to use my skills in a real life environment so that I can continue to learn and grow my skills throughout time.

I'm so excited for what the future holds, please feel free to reach out to me with any questions or prospects!

My Passion

As a child growing up in the tech boom, my parents had no way of knowing how to equip me to safely use the internet. By 11 years old I had already stumbled across exceptionally grotesque imagery, and by 13 I developed a device addiction. These weren't necessarily oversights on my parents part, but the reality is they had no idea how much money was being spent, and frankly how much money was being made, by tech giants that started selling user data and crafting intentionally addictive algorithms and softwares. I think if they had known that these tech giants were trying to sell the attention of their users, my parents would have fought a little harder for my safety.

As a 29 year old adult, I am just now finding myself free from a social media and device addiction. That's 16 years that I spent observing feeds when I could have been doing so much more, and sadly, my story is not unique at all. The average American in 2024 spends 7 hours on their phone a day. If you work a full-time job, that leaves you with one hour of free time before bedtime. This means the average American is so addicted to their device, that they are sacrificing one of three things: Sleep, free time, or work productivity

There is little being done federally to protect users, and I'm not confident that this is something that the government can move fast enough to keep up with. And that's where I see my purpose in the grand scheme of things.

If the world really is about supply and demand, then what I'm seeing is a strong demand and very little supply. That demand being, software that helps users engage in healthy online practices. Let's face it, there is not a reality that we can live in anymore where removing a smartphone from your life is a possibility. Much like the invention of the automobile. Once it took off, it was a necessity. But much like the automobile, safety features need to begin being developed.

I would feel most at peace and fulfilled if I were to begin a career path with a company that is actively taking steps to help protect users, and enable them to live full, healthy lives.