Samuel Mateo, Jr.

My name is Samuel Mateo, Jr. son of Samuel & Maria Mateo. I was born on November 25th 1977 in the town of Rio Grande, Puerto Rico, but lived in a Canovanas, PR in a small barrio called San Isidro. Years later I find out that at the time there were only two hospitals in the area so you were either born in Rio Grande or Fajardo, Rio Grande was just closer.

I moved to Worcester, MA when I was 6 years old and lived there till my Junior year in High School; in 1994 we moved to Holyoke, MA. During my time in Worcester I had some great experiences in life. I loved my time in school especially my teachers, I had some wonderful teachers. Mrs. Garcia at Belmont Community School was my teacher in 5th and 6th grade, those were some great times. I remember putting on a play about the La Bamba movie and I was playing the role of Richie Valens, wow awesome childhood memories. Thank You Mrs. Garcia where ever you are. I spent my middle school years at Worcester East Middle School and then continued my education at North High School until we moved to Holyoke where I graduated in 1995 from Holyoke High School. Go Purple Knights!!!

We lived in several places in Worcester including, Merrick St. (2 Years), Beacon St. (2 Years), Prospect St. at Plumley Village East (7 Years) and Country Club Blvd. in Lincoln Village (4 Years). I have many fond memories of all these places including roughing it up with my neighbor at Merrick St., it was my first true fight LOL. At Plumley where we lived the longest we had tons of fun including after school programs where I first started getting into drumming with Dick. I remember carrying my drumset, a 5 piece with cymbals and all, from one end of the projects to the other so we could play. Dick where ever you are thanks for the inspiration.

I have two sisters, Yeisie and Joselyn, 25 and 24 years old respectively. Yeisie is right now working as a social worker with the state of Massachusetts but wishes to be a Parole Officer. Joselyn is the one in the family you might label as the black sheep, but she’s a great and loveable person. She just had a lot of things not go her way as she grew up so she rebelled and pretty much doesn’t have education past 9th grade. She’s is great with kids and loves to do home decoration as well as bake.

I of course am the oldest of the siblings and am very proud to be the only boy. I was the protective brother and man of the house when our father left the family when I was just 7 years old. We waited 12 long years for him to comeback and it may seem like we should not have taken him back after so many hardships he put our family through but he came back a changed man.

We are a christian family, 7th day pentecostal to be exact. It’s a rare doctrine but one we embrace wholeheartedly. My father gave his life to the Lord in 1988, I believe, and that is when he came home. He is now the pastor of our church going on 10 years and the family is his support there. I play the Drums and sing (sometimes), my sister (Yeisie) sings, my mom is the pastor’s wife and we all carry one or more roles in the church’s administration. My younger sis (Joselyn) does not serve the Lord as of yet, but we pray that someday she will join us.

My family, mostly (Mom, Dad, Sis, and 2 cousins), is also part of a band that was started at our church called “Los Hijos De Bethsaida” (Bethsaida’s Children). Site can be seen HERE. It’s in spanish so learn it before you go . We play mostly contemporary christian music but we’ve also been known to play some latin stuff aswell as alternative rock. We have one CD that we put out in June 1999 and we are currently working on our second.

During the making of our first CD I had to sit down with the guy who created the CD artwork since I was the most artistic of the group. To this point I had been dabbling in desktop publishing software like Publisher, Print Artist and such but I did not know how to use Photoshop and this was the perfect opportunity to learn. As I sat there with Danny going over the art and what we wanted to do I also had tons of questions as to how to use photoshop and because of those late nights in his office I was able to walk away with a decent amount of know how and began my journey into the world of a graphic artist. Thanks Danny!

Once I graduated high school I decided to continue my education at UMass – Amherst in the Engineering School (Electrical Engineer), a semester of that curriculum was enough for me to know I needed to find a different major . Well to keep a long story short I ended up having to drop out of UMass after 2.5 semesters because of financial hardships. It took me a couple of years but I went back to school in 1999 and decided to go to Holyoke Community College and major in my first love, computers. It’s 2005 and I have yet to get my Associates Degree, hehehe. I need a couple of courses (lab science and networking) to get my associate and I’m done. I just don’t have the time.

During the time at HCC I started dabbling in web design and took some courses and with the help of a classmate and friend we started developing websites and graphics for clients. Since I already had a some experience in graphic arts it was just a matter of creating the graphics for the web and adding the code to put it together. Luis was the one who tied all together very nicely for me and helped me a lot in the beginning. Luis where ever you are thanks for everything.

Currently I work fulltime at JC Danczak, Inc. as their webmaster and IT and maintain several personal and clients sites. I have since expanded my services to also include Hosting and Domain registering. Check out my sites in the links sections.

There is lots more about me that I could talk about but I’m sure you don’t want to read for another three hours so I’ll keep the next few lines brief. I am Happy. * I don’t have a girlfriend and have never been married. I am very interested in someone right now and am not sure if it’s going to work out but I’ll let God put it all together for me. If it’s meant to be it will be. I love kids and animals especially Dogs, the family owns a small Chihuahua called Ruby, she is awesome. I love video games and own an Xbox and am on Xbox Live almost every day with the Gamer Tag ProSam, usually playing Halo 2. Bring it if you think you can beat me. I love watching TV. Reality TV like American Idol (Bo should have Won) and the Apprentice, cop dramas like The Shield and NYPD Blue, Sci-Fi like Star Trek, Stargate, sitcoms like Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond. The list is long so I’ll stop there.

That’s pretty much it people, if you have any comments you know what to do.

SAMMY OUT!!!

*UPDATE: 12/14/2005
If you have kept up with my blog posts you will have known by now that the person that I implied to in this page is Josie. We’re on our way to our sixth month together as of this update and I could not be any happier.