About me

I’m a mid-west preacher’s kid who got tired of corn fields and liked the ocean.  I got an undergrad from the University of Illinois in Liberal Arts and Sciences because they thought you might have a better chance at getting a job with that than a biology degree.  Like many before and since, I found this not to be the case.  My roommate got something like 20 offers from his pre-chem degree.  Me? $13,000 for a job in a spice factory in Chicago.  Really?  So I ran away to get a masters degree in Oceanography from Florida Institute of Technology where I learned that getting seasick was a real drag.  I did get a nice tan.  My first real job was at Horn Point Labs.  There I learned how to get lost on the Chesapeake and dodge the Queen Mary II.  All this while dragging around an IMB XT pc ship to ship. After 4 years I decided to head west.  So I packed up everything I owned and drove with my dog across the U.S. to my new job working as a marine tech for the R/V Wecoma which was operated by OSU.  I sailed around the Pacific for 10 years working with scientist from around the world.  I quickly learned that you never get something for nothing.  When they hand that phD to a person in one hand they take away common sense in another.  Luckily I made friends with an old bosun who did his best to keep me out of harms way at sea.  Plus I did meet a lady that changed my life.

Water, water, it all looks the same.    Hawaii or Newport, what’s the difference. I left the sea for a variety of reasons the biggest being I now had a family.  Change of career time.  I got a job at WOU as a new programmer/Analyst for their Banner system.  Learned a lot, drove a lot, and after 10 years I decided I had enough of dodging debris on Hwy 99W, Hwy 22, and I5.  So I took a job at PCC doing the same thing and I only had to avoid debris for 7 miles instead of 50.  Plus I got into a great fantasy baseball league.  Four years later we moved and I was looking at another long commute or living apart from my spouse during the week.  15 years at sea and I’m not going to start that again.  So here I am, back at OSU working with a great gang of folks and doing the FIS programming for OUS.  I’m just at a desk this time and my pencil doesn’t roll around with the swells.

However, I’m still rolling around.  The TRUs moved their Banner instances to the cloud along with their Banner support so no more money in USSE fr yours truly.  I took a job down the street over at the Office of the Registrar which is run by a lady I worked with up at PCC.  Small world.