A Short Biography
I am an avid nature photographer! I have been taking pictures since I was 12 or so, using all kinds of cameras and film. I long ago left film behind, however, going all digital. Some of my photos can be viewed on my personal photo pages. Although I have never done any professional photographic work, I have often thought about trying to sell some of my pictures.
I am also an avid Macintosh computer fan. I have been using the Macintosh since 1984, when my dad brought one home from work. The clunky looking machine, shown at left, was called a Mac 128K. Why, you ask? Because it only had 128 K - yes, that's a 'K', as in "kilobytes" - of RAM. In comparison, the machine I'm typing this on has 4 GB of RAM. For those not versed in such things, 4 GB is exactly 4,194,304 K, more than 32,000 times more than the RAM in my family's first Mac. The Mac 128K also had a whopping 8 MHz (yes, MHz, not GHz) processor. Further, it had no hard drive at all, relying entirely on its 400K floppy drive - which, at the time, could hold the entire system, an application and your files, in about 1/1,250,000 of the storage space on my current machine's hard drive. Things sure have changed in the last 27 years!
What's that? You say I'm a nerd? Well, yeah, I suppose so. My life has been a saga of professional nerdism, and I don't see becoming a professional web designer changing that a whole lot. I have been involved with computers professionally many times over the years.
I have worked full-time computer support jobs, done consulting, been a technical writer for a programming magazine and even owned my own software company, BitJuggler Software. (I closed BitJuggler at the end of 2006, due to lack of time to properly support my software.)
I also have my artistic side. My photography is obviously one example of this. I also was interested in painting and drawing in middle and high school. However, I have not done any painting since high school, and no real sketching since my sophomore year of college. I prefer photography these days. The analytical side of me gets too involved in details, making art more of a chore than an enjoyment for me. Still, I am proud of the paintings and drawings I did when I was younger. These skills also serve me well in creating graphics for web sites.
Most recently, I had a brief flirtation with teaching high school science. I spent three years completing a teaching program, and then had a couple positions (after student teaching) within a two-year period. That was enough for me. I love teaching, but hated being a teacher. What's the difference, you ask? Being a teacher involves more behavior management, paperwork and begging for resources than it involves actual teaching. So now I'm back at home, starting down a different road.
Of course, my biggest accomplishment is something I've been working on for the many years, and will be working on for some time into the future: my kids. My family is very important to me. I have been a stay-at-home dad on and off for years, and I have to say it has been a wonderful experience. It has, of course, had its challenges, but the rewards are incredible.