A little bit about me for your files....
I realized that the autobiographical bit I supplied on this site was written in September of 1996. (How long is that in Web Years?) So I thought I should update it a bit. And then I thought it might be fun to keep the 1996 data but provide updates

**A little bit about me for your files....**
I realized that the autobiographical bit I supplied on this site was written in September of 1996. (How long is that in Web Years?) So I thought I should update it a bit. And then I thought it might be fun to keep the 1996 data but provide updates

Autobiographical Note 1996
The quick summary: I'm a middle-aged (yeah, yeah, middle-aged if I expect to live past 100 -- well, why not?), married, father of three, living in Rhode Island.
Autobiographical Note 2000
The quick summary: I'm still middle-aged, might even be a year or so older *grin* and still married and still have three kids and still live in Rhode Island.

More details:

I'm originally from New York State: grew up in the mid-Hudson Valley, lived in the Binghamton area for around twenty-five years, relocated to Rhode Island late in 1995.
Nancy and I married in 1979. We have two children: Jennifer, now in high school, is an athlete (especially track & cross-country) and a web page builder; Sean, now in sixth grade, plays soccer and enjoys computer games. Both enjoy art and writing. Nancy is a systems analyst, currently working for a major bank. (Jennifer and Sean are not their real names; they requested that I not use their real names and, although I often tell them that the primary goal of parents is to embarrass their children, I am following their wishes in this.) I also have a son, Adam, who is a professional photographer living in the Big Apple.

More details:

We're still married, had our twentieth wedding anniversary in 1999. I have not asked the kids lately if they still wanted me to use pseudonymns for them, so I'll continue that practice. Jennifer is now a senior in high school, has a drivers license, is applying to colleges. Sean is now a high school freshman, is built like a football player, lifts weights, has a beard, could pass for a college student. Nancy left the bank to become senior database architect for an different company, but then dumped the whole high tech world to be a math teacher. Before we moved to Rhode Island she earned a master's degree in education (summa cum laude, I might add) and had hoped for a chance to teach. She taught high school math during the 1998-99 school year but really wanted to work with younger children, so she moved into the middle school and is teaching seventh grade math this year. Adam still works in the Big Apple but he left the world of free-lance photography to work for an advertising agency.

My professional background is in information systems, but my current (since Oct. '95) job involves teaching, not programming. (My actual job title is something like senior courseware developer and training consultant.) I work for a small division of a large blue computer company (yeah, the one known by its initials) and my job involves developing courses to train people in the use of our software and also teaching those courses. My students may be new-hires in my division or employees from other parts of this world-wide big blue company or programmer/analysts from companies that have purchased our software. (This software is not shrink-wrapped retail software; it is major industrial strength stuff whose price tag contains many digits.)
Education? B.A. in English, graduate study in education, graduate study in literature, M.S. in Systems Science (Nancy & I co-authored our thesis: Human Factors Engineering and the Design of Online Computer Application Systems), also graduate study in information resource management. Oh, and I am currently taking a grad course in the design & planning of adult learning systems.

Well, I still have sort of the same job. I've been promoted, so my title is now Senior Education Specialist, but I do much the same kind of work. Sometimes I do a lot of traveling, sometimes I do very little traveling. I seem to get to England on an annual basis. (That is a good thing, I have always enjoyed England.) I have also been to Australia (Sydney) and would love to get back there again. Vienna was interesting (I love art museums and the Kunsthistoriches Museum is marvelous). (I wrote about Vienna in this entry) I enjoyed a trip to Mexico City where I got to climb the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon. (Fantastic, except for getting sick.) (That's a three-entry installment; it starts with part one.) Let's see, a week and a half in Honolulu in December of '98, yeah, that was lovely. I also get to various other destinations, like New York City and Minneapolis and Boston and... oh yeah, once I spent almost 22 hours in Virginia, now that was a real quick fly-in, fly-out experience... and there was an interesting drive to Middletown, Connecticut, in a snow storm last winter...
Obviously, none of our education has gone away. Nancy picked up some more education credits to meet Rhode Island requirements. Last year I became a "Certified Professional Trainer" and I am currently in the process of learning things like UML and XML and java programming.
Hobbies & interests? Well, this kind of stuff, obviously. I'm also sort of a runner. Not as fast as I used to be, but I wasn't all that fast then... but I do enjoy running. Jennifer & I have been entering 5k races together since she was ten. I sometimes enter longer races, 15k, 20k, once did a half marathon ('fraid my knees do not want to do a full marathon). Longest race this year was the Narragansett Blessing of the Fleet 10 Mile Run. How fast? Hmmm, let's just say it's a good thing my watch has a calendar feature as well as a stop watch function. I enjoy doing things with my family... going to the beach, going for walks, all kinds of family outings: museums, youth soccer & softball, etc. Also enjoy reading, especially science fiction & private eye stuff, but I don't seem to have any where near as much time for reading as I used to. Hanging out with family & friends, talking, sharing good times. I like to cook, which is a good thing because I am the primary preparer of meals in this family; unfortunately, these days speed of preparation has to take precedence over gourmet considerations. Same hobbies and interests. I ran the Narragansett Blessing of the Fleet 10 Mile Run again in '97, this time with my brother and we had a great time. (In '98 my daughter and I were hiking in the Catskills that weekend.) My brother and I had planned to run it again in '99 but he was recovering from surgery so we couldn't. This year, however, we are pledged to run it together.
And everything else is pretty much the same except neither of the kids plays soccer anymore and Jennifer dropped athletics. She did join the debate team and took part in some theatre. She is into role-playing games on the Internet and playing dungeons and dragons and is really into programming. (She now has her own copy of Turbo Pascal on her computer.) Sean is into computer games and web surfing and MP3 files. He has a 150 watt subwoofer installed under the computer desk here in our kitchen and has a stack of stereo components and a pair of speakers that are three and a half feet tall on either side of the desk.

[Updated version January, 2000] I also have a journal entry that is related to this My (laughable) academic career -- 01/07/00

Note: At some point late in 2003 my daughter indicated she thought it was foolish of me to call her "Jennifer" instead of her real name (but it had been her idea) and "Sean" said he didn't care -- so just to confuse everyone, more recent entries use their real names: Gillian (or Jill for short) and Jeremy.

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Autobiographical Note 1996

Autobiographical Note 2000

More details:

More details:

Autobiographical Note 1996 The quick summary: I'm a middle-aged (yeah, yeah, middle-aged if I expect to live past 100 -- well, why not?), married, father of three, living in Rhode Island.	Autobiographical Note 2000 The quick summary: I'm still middle-aged, might even be a year or so older grin and still married and still have three kids and still live in Rhode Island.
More details: I'm originally from New York State: grew up in the mid-Hudson Valley, lived in the Binghamton area for around twenty-five years, relocated to Rhode Island late in 1995. Nancy and I married in 1979. We have two children: Jennifer, now in high school, is an athlete (especially track & cross-country) and a web page builder; Sean, now in sixth grade, plays soccer and enjoys computer games. Both enjoy art and writing. Nancy is a systems analyst, currently working for a major bank. (Jennifer and Sean are not their real names; they requested that I not use their real names and, although I often tell them that the primary goal of parents is to embarrass their children, I am following their wishes in this.) I also have a son, Adam, who is a professional photographer living in the Big Apple.	More details: We're still married, had our twentieth wedding anniversary in 1999. I have not asked the kids lately if they still wanted me to use pseudonymns for them, so I'll continue that practice. Jennifer is now a senior in high school, has a drivers license, is applying to colleges. Sean is now a high school freshman, is built like a football player, lifts weights, has a beard, could pass for a college student. Nancy left the bank to become senior database architect for an different company, but then dumped the whole high tech world to be a math teacher. Before we moved to Rhode Island she earned a master's degree in education (summa cum laude, I might add) and had hoped for a chance to teach. She taught high school math during the 1998-99 school year but really wanted to work with younger children, so she moved into the middle school and is teaching seventh grade math this year. Adam still works in the Big Apple but he left the world of free-lance photography to work for an advertising agency.
My professional background is in information systems, but my current (since Oct. '95) job involves teaching, not programming. (My actual job title is something like senior courseware developer and training consultant.) I work for a small division of a large blue computer company (yeah, the one known by its initials) and my job involves developing courses to train people in the use of our software and also teaching those courses. My students may be new-hires in my division or employees from other parts of this world-wide big blue company or programmer/analysts from companies that have purchased our software. (This software is not shrink-wrapped retail software; it is major industrial strength stuff whose price tag contains many digits.) Education? B.A. in English, graduate study in education, graduate study in literature, M.S. in Systems Science (Nancy & I co-authored our thesis: Human Factors Engineering and the Design of Online Computer Application Systems), also graduate study in information resource management. Oh, and I am currently taking a grad course in the design & planning of adult learning systems.	Well, I still have sort of the same job. I've been promoted, so my title is now Senior Education Specialist, but I do much the same kind of work. Sometimes I do a lot of traveling, sometimes I do very little traveling. I seem to get to England on an annual basis. (That is a good thing, I have always enjoyed England.) I have also been to Australia (Sydney) and would love to get back there again. Vienna was interesting (I love art museums and the Kunsthistoriches Museum is marvelous). (I wrote about Vienna in this entry) I enjoyed a trip to Mexico City where I got to climb the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon. (Fantastic, except for getting sick.) (That's a three-entry installment; it starts with part one.) Let's see, a week and a half in Honolulu in December of '98, yeah, that was lovely. I also get to various other destinations, like New York City and Minneapolis and Boston and... oh yeah, once I spent almost 22 hours in Virginia, now that was a real quick fly-in, fly-out experience... and there was an interesting drive to Middletown, Connecticut, in a snow storm last winter... Obviously, none of our education has gone away. Nancy picked up some more education credits to meet Rhode Island requirements. Last year I became a "Certified Professional Trainer" and I am currently in the process of learning things like UML and XML and java programming.
Hobbies & interests? Well, this kind of stuff, obviously. I'm also sort of a runner. Not as fast as I used to be, but I wasn't all that fast then... but I do enjoy running. Jennifer & I have been entering 5k races together since she was ten. I sometimes enter longer races, 15k, 20k, once did a half marathon ('fraid my knees do not want to do a full marathon). Longest race this year was the Narragansett Blessing of the Fleet 10 Mile Run. How fast? Hmmm, let's just say it's a good thing my watch has a calendar feature as well as a stop watch function. I enjoy doing things with my family... going to the beach, going for walks, all kinds of family outings: museums, youth soccer & softball, etc. Also enjoy reading, especially science fiction & private eye stuff, but I don't seem to have any where near as much time for reading as I used to. Hanging out with family & friends, talking, sharing good times. I like to cook, which is a good thing because I am the primary preparer of meals in this family; unfortunately, these days speed of preparation has to take precedence over gourmet considerations.	Same hobbies and interests. I ran the Narragansett Blessing of the Fleet 10 Mile Run again in '97, this time with my brother and we had a great time. (In '98 my daughter and I were hiking in the Catskills that weekend.) My brother and I had planned to run it again in '99 but he was recovering from surgery so we couldn't. This year, however, we are pledged to run it together. And everything else is pretty much the same except neither of the kids plays soccer anymore and Jennifer dropped athletics. She did join the debate team and took part in some theatre. She is into role-playing games on the Internet and playing dungeons and dragons and is really into programming. (She now has her own copy of Turbo Pascal on her computer.) Sean is into computer games and web surfing and MP3 files. He has a 150 watt subwoofer installed under the computer desk here in our kitchen and has a stack of stereo components and a pair of speakers that are three and a half feet tall on either side of the desk.