who am I really?
I am a full time computer professional living in the Dayton, Ohio area with my wife and children.
I am originally from the east coast, where I spent the first almost 30 years of my life living only minutes from a beach. My Mum is the oldest of 8 from an Irish fishing family and Dad is a Navy veteran so I always thought I had seawater in my veins instead of blood. I’m the oldest of two sons, lived in Florida till I was about 6 and then moved to Rhode Island where I lived until I joined the Navy after college.
During my six years of active duty I lived up and down the east coast including time in Rhode Island, Florida, Maine and South Carolina and actually moved 14 times in that six years. After the Navy, I moved to Michigan and then onto Ohio about a year later. I have been in Ohio for the past 18 years and I think I am finally getting used to it. Having lived on the coast for nearly 30 years, I miss the ocean dearly and get out whenever I can. I still have the opportunity to travel for the Navy Reserve, so I manage to get my ‘ocean fix’ a few times a year.
I have been fortunate enough in my life to find two women who wanted to marry me. Don’t worry, I only married one at a time, and I have 3 beautiful children from those two unions. There is more to this story, but we don’t have time to go into it.
Other than that, I am just a normal guy, living a normal life as a web interface designer and usability engineer for a big information the Director of Interactive Services for a small start-up company in Ohio. I also run my own little freelance web design company, and I am currently retired as a Commander in from the Navy Reserve in December of 2007.
What else would you like to know? Just ask….
milestones, so far…
- Born at a very early age
- Fairly normal childhood, I guess
- Graduated high school, Bristol, RI
- Graduated college, University of Rhode Island
- Joined the US Navy
- Got married
- Had a son
- Got married again (don’t worry there is a divorce in there somewhere but I don’t consider that a milestone)
- Had another son
- Had a daughter
Everything else in my life is the filler between these events.
in between all that…
I think back and I have been blessed. I have had the opportunity to experience life in ways that many people never have the chance to. Other than my children, who have brought me my greatest joys (and frustrations), the other things that stand out in my mind (presented in no particular order) are ;
- crossing the Atlantic in a US Navy Submarine and a Canadian Navy ship
- transiting the Panama Canal
- crossing the Equator and Arctic Circle
- watching the Northern Lights from the fjords of Norway
- seeing the sea glow with bioluminescent life off Central America
- sailing in 40 foot seas with a hangover
- seeing Pope John Paul II at the Vatican
- watching the sunset in Kota Kinabalu
- watching the sunrise while sipping cappuccino in Naples
- learning to juggle and ride a unicycle
- becoming a magazine model… no, really
- drinking beers with the Paul McCartney look-a-like from Beatlemania
- drinking peppermint schnapps with Ringling Bros. Circus clowns
- a baseball game at Yokohama Stadium
among many, many others.
my travels…
“I wanna hang a map of the world in my house. Then I’m gonna put pins into all the locations that I’ve traveled to. But first, I’m gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map so that it won’t fall down.”
the late Mitch Hedberg
At last count, there where 264 countries in the world (according to the CIA World Fact Book) and I have had the opportunity to visit 28 of them, some of them multiple times (in parens). They include;
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