A little about me (revised 01 February 2006):

For the curious, here are some links to family pictures.

Here is my Florida Trip Report, from January 2000.

I'm a Software Engineer for a "Large Aerospace Concern", as we say, once McDonnell Douglas, but following one of the endless wave of Aerospace Industry mergers, it is now Boeing. I'm 46 years old, married to the former Mary Ann Davidson, with two children (Melissa, 16, and Geoff, 13). I was born in Naperville, IL, a suburb of Chicago, and attended the University of Illinois in Urbana, IL, receiving a B.S. in Physics in 1981. By that time I had decided that I wasn't really cut out to be a Physics Professor (my original plan), and I took a job with McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Company in St. Louis, using my summer work experience as a computer programmer at Argonne and Fermi National Laboratories to wangle a job as a Software Engineer. I assumed that working for an Astronautics company meant I would eventually be working on space projects. (After all, the first astronaut from a commercial concern (Charlie Walker) worked for us, and to this day I work closely with the man who was scheduled to be second. (His flight was scheduled for Summer 1986, six months after Challenger, so never happened.)) However, space work (for me) was not to be (and the company's name has changed several times). I've been programming guidance systems for a variety of projects for my entire 25 years.

Mary Ann and I were married in 1985, we bought a house in 1987, Melissa Caitlin was born in 1989, and Geoffrey Thomas was born in 1992. We also had a cat (Mickey, since deceased), and a dog (Dipsy, also deceased), both pets acquired on the same day in 1987 that we moved into our house. (We had arranged to take both of them off their previous owners' hands, but had to wait until we were in a house.) We bought a larger house in 1994, and live what might be called typical midwestern suburban lives (assuming there is any such thing.) We have since acquired two new dogs: Strider, a rather large (85 pounds) black lab mix, about 4 years old; and Reggie, only about a year old as of August 2006, a much smaller blond lab/beagle mix (he's about 40 pounds).

Mary Ann is a Science Coordinator's Assistant for the Webster Groves School District. She's my age and a lifelong St. Louisan. She has a degree in Physical Education from the University of Missouri at St. Louis. She likes softball and volleyball, both of which we play together, and as a spectator is a ferocious ice hockey fan, and generally a fan of most other sports (pro basketball and college football excepted). She is a regular reader, though dare I say not to the degree I am, and is most fond of mysteries, in particular those of Anne Perry, Elmore Leonard, Sue Grafton, Charlotte MacLeod, Sara Paretsky, Georges Simenon, and Donald Westlake. The only SF/Fantasy books I've had success in introducing to her are rather borderline: Replay by Ken Grimwood, Flying in Place by Susan Palwick, Portrait of Jennie by Robert Nathan and Jasper Fforde's books are the only ones that come to mind. Oh, and I recently tried the novels of Karen Joy Fowler on her, and she has read them with enjoyment. (And I should say that, along with Melissa and I and most everybody else in the world, she has been devouring the Harry Potter books.)

Melissa is now a junior, tall for her age and slender. She is an excellent student, ranked third in her class. She plays varstiy Field Hockey and swims for the High School teams. She reads any number of books, including the Harry Potter books, the Redwall books, Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events, and many books devoted to American history. She is also a fanatic fan of Lord of the Rings, both movie and book. She plays the piano, the oboe, and the saxophone.

Geoff is now a freshman. He is extremely good-natured, and rather goofy. He is a great sports fan, in particular right now a fanatic (and of course frustrated) Blues hockey fan. After some years of struggles at school he just had his best year ever, all As and Bs. And he has been running Cross Country for the High School freshman team.

My sister found this page, and twitted me about not mentioning her or my other siblings. There are quite a few. Jim is a computer consultant, and is married to Cheri, and lives in Naperville (our home town) with his children, Alex, Megan, and Carlie. Bill is an architect (or more precisely, a structural engineer), in Indianapolis, IN. His wife is Karen, who is just starting a new career as an elementary school teacher, and they have two children of an age with ours: Claire and Wesley. Paul is one of the peripatetic ones, having lived in Detroit, Lansing, Dallas, Santa Barbara, London, England, Rochester, NY, and Rochester Hills, Michigan. He now lives in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. He is a high financial muckety-muck for EDS, and he and his wife Dianne have four boys, Benjamin, Thomas, and a pair of twins, David and Christopher. Ann is my only living sister, and the other peripatetic sibling. She is the only one to have lived in St. Louis besides me, and she has also lived in Kansas City, Chicago, Baltimore, and now she and her husband Marc Lucas live near Atlanta. She has been a pharmaceutical salesperson, and a real estate agent, and now she is raising her girls, Katie, Jennifer, and Madeleine, while she and Marc run a window installation company. My youngest brother is Pat, who is a Production Manager for an electronics company, and lives in the city of Chicago. He is the only one who shares my interest in SF, and we trade recommendations. Indeed, I recently dumped a pile of magazines on him -- including copies of Black Gate and Fantasy Magazine, for which I write.

My parents are both mostly retired, and split time between condos near Naperville and in Port Charlotte, Florida. My mother was a schoolteacher, though she worked part time at a bank for many years, and my father worked in Cafeteria Management (and related areas), mostly at Argonne National Laboratory.

I've added a whole page of pictures of me and family members and so on. Some other pictures: fellow SFF-Netter Harold Chester has posted a picture which he took at ConQuest 29, a science fiction convention in Kansas City, in May 1998. Harold's pictures are here. There are some more pictures from ConQuest 30, at Dave Truesdale's page, and elsewhere, too, including Keith Stokes Midwest Fan photo page, which I am too lazy just now to post a link to ....

In addition, there is a picture of the family at the Saint Louis Galleria Web Site, and there is a story to go with the picture. Basically, we won a trip to Universal Studios in Florida, which we took in January 2000. A fairly detailed trip report is here.

I've taken the opportunity to add a couple more pictures to this page. Here are two taken at the Galleria, , and . Click on the small images to see larger ones (the larger files are about 100k).

(And many thanks to Richard and Melisa Michaels for the Thumbnailer program which allowed me to reduce these images.)

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