Obligatory Narcissism: Or all about me.

So when one starts to write a blog they have a few options about how much they reveal about their person. So I guess I will put what I am comfy with sharing into this little Bio-post so any visitors to this blog will have some clues.

Born and raised by a married man and woman. The eldest with 2 sisters and a brother. We always lived in fairly rural areas, mostly in PA but with occasional periods in West (by god) Virginia and Minnesota. Always had guns around our home, hunting, fishing and trapping equipment was abundant, it was with the resources from the hunting, fishing and trapping along with my dads day job that we managed to eek out a fairly comfortable lower middle income existence. We ate what we killed or caught and sold the hides from trapping, beaver, muskrat and fox for extra spending cash...back before fur became un-PC well, before there was even a term PC.

I learned how to survive in the wilderness, how to shoot and provide for myself. I also spent huge numbers of hours reloading shotgun shells, and of course shooting. 12gauge for a skinny little kid (116lbs at 5'10" on my 18th birthday) was an experience but I managed and I could not guess how many cases of .22 rounds I fired from various single shot rifles and later in my teens a Remington semi-auto. I learned a lot of useful skills from my dad, skills I would have liked to had the chance to share with my son but circumstances would rule that out.

As I approached age 18 my father ensured I knew well in advance that once I reached the age of 18 I was expected to move out and make my own way in the world. There was neither money nor desire for my parents to send me to college and was rather pointedly directed to the military. I always did well in school and graduated 10th in my class of 500. The US Navy a sporadic tradition for my family recruited me for it's Advanced Electronics program which I decided to pursue. My scores on the aptitude tests were high enough that I was urged to take the Nuclear Power program or to follow the path to the Naval Security Group. I was not interested in the Nuclear Power program so went the Security group route. I entered an intense series of schools which imparted the equivalent of a B.S. EE education in a mere 2.5 years. At the end of that training I still did not know what I would be doing for the Navy, I was granted a Top Secret SCI clearance and then entered another 10 months of education on the systems I would be supporting. I cannot say what I did, but I can say that it irks me to no end that Tom Clancy could write all about what I worked on and make millions from it. :)

I spent 1980 to 1990 in the US Navy stationed at various remote facilities and spending a lot of time on planes going to places that I "Did not have the need to know" where they were. I came to really appreciate the leadership that Ronald Reagan brought to our Nation and witnessed first hand the transition of the US military from being a Joke form the 1970's to being respected world wide in the 1980's. In 1990 with the collapse of the Soviet Union the Armed Forces in general were drawing down so after completing another 10 month training course and receiving a rather large reenlistment bonus, I was let go from military service.

I married a woman whom I had served with and traveled with her for several years from duty station to duty station and worked as a civilian contractor. We had my son and daughter and had wonderful plans for the future when we received word that we would be posted to Fort Meade Maryland for the last 4 years of her active duty service. The only snag was that she would be away from the kids and I for about a year for training. I set up house in Maryland and found a decent contracting job with one of the beltway bandits and at the end of my wife's training I found out that we would not in fact be sharing a future together. Life sucked for a while but I got through it and moved on.

It was while I was working for the Beltway Bandits that I learned the trick to making a career. I learned that employment was a sort of game, each side maneuvering to get the best deal it could, and that everything was negotiable no matter what "Policy" said. If you were needed bad enough then you could negotiate. Salary was also something I learned to negotiate and I owe this education to one specific person who was an African Immigrant that worked with me on one project. He pretty much explained the "game" to me and it was like a light switch being flipped.
With this information I managed to exceed my life goals that I had set as a naive kid from rural PA before I hit the age of 30. Needless to say I had to set some new life goals.

With all the training I had from the Navy and a public school education I managed to do fairly well for myself and finally met the love of my life, with whom I now live in Maryland. I work from home as a technical expert and keep horrendous hours. We live with our 3 dogs Kodiak (kodi), Bailey (bailey pig) and Calley (rat dog). Kodi and Callie are American Eskimo rescues and Bailey is a Beagle/Doxie mutt also a rescue. My children now live with their mother in PA and my son has graduated from HS. Bailey is the Boss Bitch around the house when Mysti or I are not asserting our dominance, and is also the pigdog, not a scrap of food falls without her scarfing it up....and when feeding time is over, Bailey is in charge of making sure that the dog dishes are cleaned down to the chrome finish.

Life has accelerated it's pace for us and I have started working on getting a degree just for my own enjoyment. I recently finished an AA in transfer studies to facilitate my pursuit of a BS in Computer Science. Where I go from here, I am not sure, but my hopes are to retire from full time employment within 10 years and do something I enjoy more than what I am doing now, perhaps something a bit more people oriented and less machine oriented.

That is a capsule summary of my life to date, Next I guess I might post my personal interests.