Why the Major Update?

After trying to keep up with a personal webpage for more than thirteen years, and learning the thorough impossibility of doing that on anything like a regular basis, I've decided the only hope is to try for an annual basis. Then I looked at the hopeless disorganization of my page and its thirty separate divisions and realized that the only way to manage the transition was to go through and refile those thirty pages worth of pictures and text in something approaching that sort of organization.

That said, processing and connection speeds have really picked up since I first began keeping this page on the slowest of dial-up connections, without so much as my own scanner. Now, with a digital camera and a high speed connection, it's easy enough to look back and laugh at the need to keep so few pictures on each page in order to avoid the frustration of slow loading pages. (I can also remember refusing to have anything to do with looking at certain friends' pages because they were so slow to load!) Then, it was truly a necessity, and I had to be very careful about such things, not only for others, but especially for the sake of my own brain-damaged, generic, 286 IBM clone. Now, faster hardware and software should mean that I can reduce the thirty pages of information to somewhat less, while still adding several more interesting things. And that is why there's a major update, this year.

When I originally had my online buddy, MrKeys, help me start this page, I wasn't entirely sure what to put on it. So I began with a few pictures of myself and my family for my online friends to see, added some of my poetry and a short story to share with those same friends, and pretty much called it quits.

Then my life became more interesting.

I met some of those same online friends: Planet, Photon, Nikki, Turbo, Sade, Castaway, Mate, Cyclist, and others whose names I've probably forgotten to mention. And an amazing thing happened. Turbo and I became very good friends.

And when he moved to California to start his printing business, he moved to my area, and I had the privilege of marrying my very best friend.

I also passed my PhD exams in that same year. If you're interested in my reading lists and interests, feel free to check those out, too. One of these days, I hope to actually be able to write my dissertation.

Now, of course, getting married didn't happen in a vacuum. As you can tell from the family portrait, the kids seemed to grow up over night. So, here is more family history.

And of course, there has to be room for the family pets on any home page.

And everyone has to have a hobby or two.
So relax, enjoy, stay awhile, if you'd like, and welcome to my world.