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So you want to know who I
am eh?
Born in North Carolina, raised in Indiana and relocated to
North Carolina, with pit
stops in California and South Carolina along the way, my parents
settled down in the
foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. The middle of three sons, I had
an opportunity to
get a degree in electrical engineering at Purdue University, but only
stayed there one
year. I later welded for a year as a steel fabricator in Charleston on
a hiatus, taking
courses at the local college and receiving an A.S. in E.E.T. from
Isothermal Community
College in Spindale, NC, where I met my wife-to-be. I later enrolled in
UNCC's E.E.
program while working as a product engineer for Yale Security, Inc.
with their research
& development team at their world headquarters in Monroe, NC. I
lived in Charlotte for
four years.
I have lived in Asheville since '92 , after Yale shut down their
electronics R&D
(killed by adverse economic conditions = bad decisions), and worked as
a design engineer
for SDX, Inc. - an electronic contract assembly house until July 98.
SDX started Entry
Electronics to support Yale's electronic hotel lock system which Yale
abandoned. As their
only design engineer, I had my hands full keeping the Yale product line
from going
extinct. I developed electronic hardware (utilizing embedded
controllers) from capturing
the schematic to laying out the printed circuit boards and writing
software (mostly in
assembly). They hired a real dumb ass named Joe ROOK who really lived
to his name. They
put his dumb-marketing-ass over the entire department and engineering.
The company was
Chapter 11 within a year. I got out and worked at Chestnut Ridge
Technologies providing
design engineering services for about two years (which has been my best
job experience to
date). Joe, if you ever read this, f*** you. I worked at Digitech International doing
much the same thing -
providing security products for the self-storage industry for four
years. Now I am
back to contract work as the job market bytes (get it?). I was
also helping out (I
think) at a local electronic contract manufacturer until my health
degraded.
Folks I must add in here that times got tough on the ol' lance'ter. I
am trying to come to
grips with:
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Wife giving up on me and divorce
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Diabetes
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Having group-A streptococcus
(flesh-eating bacteria) Bad
ju-ju causing a three-week coma that almost killed me, muscle loss
damage makes me feel bad each day (i.e. my right leg lost the entire
Tibialis exterior, which sucks).
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Loosing my main source of income
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Foreclosure and loosing my home
(though I did sell it before the bank could)
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Having my daughter kept out of
my life by my ex-wife and spending $$$ on lawyer fees to obtain
visitation
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My dog dying
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Medical bills I can not afford
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Loosing my right leg
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It is not that bad
though, I am trying to complete a document on hospital treatment and
I have other works down the pipe. Anyway, life does go on.
Asheville is a great change from Charlotte, the Blueridge Parkway was
just minutes from my
house and my wife and I used to love taking motorcycle rides through
the mountains. When I
was not working on my Fieros, the house or playing computer games, all
networked together
for multiplayer fun, I liked to kick back with a big 'ole handmade
cigar and relax with a
cold drink. My favorite cigars come from JR Tobacco, their
ultimate brands.
I have a beautiful daughter whom you can find young pictures of on this
site, had two dogs
(well actually one was a pig and was taken away) here is the dog (poor
puppy had a heat
stroke at 15 years old)...
 
that used to like eating our house and waked me up at night barking at
squirrels and such.
We had kicker anniversary keg-parties each year (except in '98 -
newborn), and used it as
an excuse to complete home improvements. But now that I'm
abandoned, I'm not much
into the party scene (shown above pre-abandoned and pre-eaten by strep,
so now that I have
a hard time getting around, I now am fat).
See my computers, electronics and hobbies section for some neat things
I like doing with
electronics & such. A recent test placed me in this group:
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