My Bio

I was born in San Jose, California. An area that is now known as Silicon Valley. My father was a Mechanical Engineer working for Lockhead. My mother had been a Nurse, but she was ill with Alzheimer's by the time I came along. I was enamored with model trains as a child. I also had a proclivity for for taking things apart and putting them back together. It often occurred that these things worked better after I had reassembled them. My father had a friend at work who was playing around with automatically switching his model railroad. My father introduced us and I discovered that there was a club of guys about my father's age that were running their model railroads using something called a computer. My father's friend had an Altair. They enjoyed having me around as I had a steady hand with a soldering iron. I started programming in earnest in 5th grade. My brother worked for Atari and I purchase an Atari 800 prototype. It looked like the 400, but was an 800 more or less. The one I got did not come with any cartridges (remember it was a prototype), so that means no ATARI BASIC, therefore my brother asked around at Atari and I got a second hand copy of the Atari Assembler Editor. Yes, my first programming language was Assembler. I became enamoured with computers and continued to "borrow" time on what ever computer system I could gain access too. My high school guidance counselor advised me against becoming a programmer. He told me that all the significant programs had been written and there were way too many programmers already. One must remember that this was the 1980s and many people believed that. So I decided to become an Architect. Being an Architect requires an advanced degree and therefore lots of college. My mothers illness and her death left my families finances in shambles. I needed to find a way to pay for college on my own. I chose to join the United States Marine Corps. I joined the Marines in part to pay for college and in part to travel. In typical Marine Corp fashion I was immediately stationed in Southern California :-). I did end up traveling around the far east and my final year was spent in Okinawa, Japan. While in the Marines I met my lovely wife. When I received orders to Desert Storm I proposed. You see she was to be getting out of the Marines in a few months. She said yes, and my orders to Desert Storm were rescinded. It seems that a Lance Corporal Groom that worked for me really wanted to go. I told my Major that I understood that I might be sent into combat when I joined the Marines, but if I had a choice I really did not want to go to the desert to work on computers. I did get orders to Okinawa however. After I was medically discharged from the Marines (due to a knee injury), I returned to my then fiance in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We had planned to settle in Portland, Oregon. We decided that we wanted to be closer to family for our children. Since living in Milwaukee I have worked as a computer technician, a Network Administrator, a Network Troubleshooter, a System Administrator (mid-range and Mainframe), a Developer and a System Architect. I live in West Allis with my beautiful wife and charming daughters (we have two). I am the coach for the Frank Lloyd Wright Lego League team. I work for a company that makes factory automation/inspection equipment.