About The Author

This web site grows as I put more stuff on the web. Let me know if you find something of interest, or want more information on a given topic.

I was born the same day in 1962 as the Mercury spaceship Aurora 7 flew. As a result, I was named after the first American to orbit our planet (John Glenn) and the first American to fly in space on a rocket (Alan Shepard). To this day I have an deep interest in science and space, and I someday hope to work at NASA, even if that means driving the tour bus as a volunteer at one of the NASA centers.

I grew up near the dismal town of Merrill, Wisconsin, a place where nearly everyone is a generation or two more inbred than what is healthy for a population of humans. I escaped from there as soon as I was legally able to do so. I have since lived a year or more in Madison, Duluth, and the Twin Cities.

I was born with a number of medical challenges, which resulted in long periods of downtime as a kid. I used that time to learn to read and do math before I entered school. Once in grade school, I taught myself electronics. That lead to a job working at Radio Shack through most of my teen years. While at Radio Shack, I further taught myself HAM radio and computer technology. This lead to my early career at General Electric doing communications engineering, and my current career in Information Technology.

Despite these challenges, I like to stay in motion and live life at full throttle as much as I can. I often work extra jobs and long hours so I can afford to pay for the travels and adventure that make life worth living. As an example, a recent adventure was getting checked out as a pilot in a retired Soviet military fighter jet. There is nothing in the world like flying over the Florida Keys at 700 miles per hour. There are also no credit card bills like those that happen when you burn $1000 of fuel on take-off.

I am an avid photographer. I enjoy taking photos at zoos, of airplanes, and travel photos. I have a goal of photographing every retired US military airplane that still exists before I pass on. My collection of airplane photos numbers over 25,000. A more recent obsession has been photographing all of the bridges over the Mississippi River. Photos adventures that I have on tap for the next two years include retracing the Lewis and Clark journey, and going to France and Germany to photograph all of the retired Concorde airliners.

Photo Gallery...
	Age 3 ...with boy's best friend.
	Age 17 ...newly graduated from high school.
	Age 18 ...a most excellent birthday.
	Age 23 ...first day with a new cycle.
	Age 24 ...a newspaper clipping.
	Age 46 ...with a touch of gray.
	Age 50 ...running the 2012 Eastbay 5K.