Hello Steemians!

My name's Branden Butler, and I am most certainly not your average high school senior. This is not my first post, but I figured it was time to introduce myself to you guys!

I'll start with the basics. I live in South Dakota, luckily near one of the few large cities (large being a relative term of course).

I'm 18 and looking forward to graduating in just a couple weeks :)

I have two brothers, Blake and Bryce, both of 'em younger.

Blake has that old sibling rivalry complex, and so far has gone out of his way to become my exact opposite. Oh well, what can you do? ¯\(ツ)/¯
Bryce is only 7, but so far he seems to gravitate more towards my interests than Blake's so there's a win for me!

My parents are Bill and Kristi, my dad's a Java programmer and my mom a dialysis nurse.

That's my family there, I ain't gonna go through my whole extended family cause it's enormous and you would probably be bored out of your mind... Oh wait! I almost forgot the kitties!

These are my two cats, Alvin and Sunny. Alvin's the one with some white fur, Sunny the other one. They are both... Interesting... Alvin constantly sits in sinks, and Sunny will try whatever he can think of to sit on your face... He literally scaled the wall in the pet store and dropped on top of my mom! That was funny to watch too, oh how she freaked out!

And I can't forget the dog too, poor old Sadie.

She's an 11 year old golden retriever, one of the friendliest dogs I have ever seen... Unless you're a deer, a rabbit, or even another dog, then you'd better stay at least 50 yards away from her. You could say she's a bit... over protective at times.

Now, on to the interesting stuff!

Rubs hands and cackles maniacally
So, I told you that my dad's a programmer, right? Well, he managed to pass down his interest for computers to me... Only I may be slightly too interested in them... I kinda started building robots when I was five with the Vex robotics kit, and learned Java from my dad when I was nine... Then at 10 my dad and I built our Tesla Coil in the garage. I thought that was super fun, but people nowadays say I had no childhood... Oh well ¯\(ツ)/¯

I did, however, also do stuff not related to computers / mad science stuff. I joined my local TaeKwonDo academy around age 9, eventually making it to the rank of Black Belt 2nd Degree 1st Level at the age of 16 before I had to quit to devote more time to academics. So don't mess with me, I'll knock your block off! Nobody expects the geek to be a black belt ;)

I also joined band and learned to play the clarinet. I've now been playing for 8 years, and I think I'm decent... At least my parents say I'm good but that's what they're supposed to say, right? :P
Oh, yes! I almost forgot to say what I was doing here! So, I originally came for Utopian, but I later decided "Hey! Wouldn't it be cool to also show off some of my photos and creations?"
So far, I've earned pretty much nothing from the few posts I've made, but I don't think I'm really that concerned about it. I actually found the idea of putting some of my work out there to be seen as something just cool and fun to do. I do so much stuff that I couldn't fix my mind on just using Utopian and keeping my content focused on robotics, which is where the photography comes in. So, what ya'll be seeing from me will be kind of a mix of content... A little bit of robotics, a bit of photography, a bit of Java / Python, a bit of cool info, and maybe a splash of music every once in awhile.

So that's me, hope you aren't too scared for my sanity after reading :P