>> A personal glimpse, and still under construction, of course!

After two years of operating our own manufacturing company, Lumen Controls, Inc., my partner and I have closed the business. I'm now engaged in a full-time job search, while completing the sale of the business components and the accounting wrap-up. You may still be able to see the old Lumen Controls web site, though you can't order anything. (Eventually, the site will be removed.)

I look forward to becoming re-employed, and also returning to many of the interests and pursuits below!

Have a *JOB OPENING* ?          Check out my RESUME!
to RESUME!

SAILING

In California, I was able to start up again the sailing I had done as a teen, through the WONDERFUL people and boats at Orange Coast College.  I loved their larger boats like Alaska Eagle (a 65 foot, 39 ton sloop, winner of the 1977 Whitbread round-the-world race -- a particularly sturdy boat for 14 people [it had to be, for the Southern Ocean!]). I look forward to when I can take one of their extended sails in the Pacific. It's probably about as close as I'm liable to get to where the Whitbread and BOC are sailed. But who knows!

Before there was a world wide web, I got the nickname "Surfer" at work because of a cruise I did off California and the stories I told about steering with a following sea. Surfing that 39 ton boat was fun -- it would be interesting to try it with the seas of the Southern Ocean.

<This will become> A whole page of Sailing Links

BOOKS

I love to read, whether its the morning paper, an old book, or browsing.

(2/25/97)  Current books include:

Some of my favorite books of all time include:

• "The Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder -- The best story about how engineers think and work I've ever encountered -- the development of Data General's competitor to the VAX. It's also really heartwarming to see people, doing what you do, portrayed in such a heroic light. [1981, Atlantic - Little, Brown, Pulitzer Prize]
  
• "The Adolescence of P1" by Thomas Ryan -- A guy makes a program to help him hack into computers, and it develops a little differently than he expected. Frighteningly realistic, for 1970s technology. God knows what's possible now, but it would probably be a set of ActiveX controls. [1977, Collier]
  
• "When Harlie was One" by David Gerrold -- Another one about the world's first sentient program. [1972, Doubleday or Ballentine]

TECHNICAL

I find that one tool and three parts of science fascinate me most. The science areas are ones which I find wonderfully complex, but comprehendable. I don't think I'll ever lose my fascination with them!

• COMPUTERS
  
  • Like most of the people who might read this, I've been fascinated by this tool for about forever. When I was 12, my Dad took me to his work near Christmas, and a guy let me on to the network, hooking up to a mainframe in Cincinnati. That game of blackjack, on a 10 cps teletype, hooked me. What  I do now couldn't have been imagined back then. How could we have comprehended object inheritance when the arguments were about to begin on "GOTOs Considered Harmful"?
    
  • And now, the computer has moved beyond something I work or play on. It's become a viewport to the world. I get frustrated, for example, when I can't zoom my TV. It's too primitive. I still read the newspaper, and watch some TV for drama & relaxation. But the net is where I get my news (even with the primitive news filters available now, it's better than any local station!). It's my world-wide yellow pages, and my favorite communication device. All it lacks is the smell of a spring morning, the 360 degree vistas of the Sierras, and connections to everybody.

    Wither? Bill Gates' vision of information appliances is interesting, and coming, but incomplete. It's much richer than even that. (Why is it that we can't make a widely-accepted house network? Because the advantage of putting our household systems on a net isn't compelling?) We're skipping HDTV, finally, and getting to DTV (we have GOT to have an FCC with a clue! And some SPEED!). (When's that DVD coming out, anyway?) Telephone service is already moving to the net, and long distance companies are becoming internet backbone providers. One enterprising company has even got a computer to answer the phone, and send your call over the internet, so that people only need standard telephones to talk over the internet. (Impressive!) Our whole financial system is moving to the internet. Cash can finally disappear, with wallet-on-a-card. Marketing with personal targets is just in its infancy, from supermarkets to news readers. Privacy is finally dying, I am greatly disheartened to find. The anonymity of the net is dying with cookies and client-side programming. Well, if it's anything, it's going to be different than now, and different than we imagine, and different than we can imagine. It's exciting!

• CARTOGRAPHY & GEODESY
  
  • I've been fascinated by how to map the Earth since I tried to survey my church's lot as a Boy Scout. I've carried that into my professional life with digital terrain data, automatic route planning, gravitational anomaly data, etc., but there's no substitute for the joy of fathoming why a projection should be the best for a purpose, and how to translate large area data into a 2-D presentation, and where to put the warnings about there being monsters beyond the edge.
    
• TIME, CHRONOLOGY, NAVIGATION, & CALENDARS
  
  • I remember feeling so free when I first found out that our system of time zones was just a construction in the 1800s for the convenience of telegraph operators on the railroads. And yet I need to have the clocks in my house all agree. REALLY agree. [I am so greatful to Scott Kister and his AccuSet program, so that I don't have to tune in WWV or call the USNO by voice phone. I HIGHLY recommend it!] I did my Communications Class persuasive speech assignment (as an undergraduate) on which calendar we should have, and why! (It only required one extra month, named, of course, Spencember!)
    
  • Obviously, Cartography + Time = Navigation. One of the reasons I want to see the Southern Ocean is to use the southern stars to find my way. I enjoy practicing with a sextant here in the midwest, but it's much more fun out of sight of land. Or to find my way on/over land with compass (or gyros). One of my favorite programs was one I wrote to solve for least-time routing, to which I then built a database of the Los Angeles freeway network. (You can see that kind of program (13 years later) both on the net and also boxed up at your local computer store.
    
  • I've been studying Calendars for about a decade now, and the web is a terrific place to get information. But, like most things on the web, information is frequently just approximately correct, with occasional attribution. It is challenging to put together the total picture, and I think I'm getting it now! I'm particularly interested in:
    • Egyptian & Roman -> Julian -> Gregorian calendars, their development, changes, and transitions.
    • Relation between Solar (e.g. Gregorian) and Lunar (e.g. Jewish) calendars.
      
• COLOR
  
  • <to be added>

CALIFORNIA

<to be added>

NORTHROP

<to be added>

MARINE FISH & OTHER CRITTERS

I''m excited by marine tropical "fish" -- actually the more interesting critters aren't fish at all. Though I've found sometimes that I need to keep only the more hardy critters, fish are pretty easy, as are crustaceans and mollusks. I've had less luck with anemones, though moving can be a hard experience on everybody. (An eight hour delay on Continental Airlines because they forgot that the FAA required a pilot that had had eight hours of sleep before reporting killed off my entire tank during my last move.)

MISC.

I've also had a fine time flying (as a private pilot), diving (I learned SCUBA in Hawaii, and have done it several times there and in California), and enjoy playing music. Though I grew up playing piano & organ, and many years of trumpet, I'm now mostly into conducting CDs. I'm especially fond of conducting Beethoven, though I like Brahms' First and just die whenever I get to conduct 1812 (it's got to be a recording with good cannon!).

I also make wine. From my years in California, I picked grapes and made wine. I've got a '91 Napa Cab bottled, and '92 Napa Cab and '93 Sonoma Cab finishing up & near time to bottle.