Age:
32 (July 31, 1975)
Location:
Minneapolis
Sign:
Leo, (this means more to others and nothing to me.)
Occupation:
Mechanical Engineer
Stats:
Look at the albums, form your own opinion.
TV shows I watch regularly:
Simpsons, Seinfeld, Documentaries on PBS
Update - Don’t have a TV anymore, :), so don’t watch one anymore. The extra free time is great. (I do have a lot of DVD’s [1] to watch, though.)
Movies I’d watch again:
Fight Club, LotR trilogy, the 1st Matrix, Finding Nemo, the Kill Bills
Best books I’ve read:
New authors and good writing, James Clavel’s sagas, LofR trilogy, Steven King’s Bachman Books
Things I like:
Nature, good conversation, completion of a challenging task, kids, buying new toys, singing, people who know who they are and are in control of their lives
Things I don’t like:
Bad attitudes, being out of beer, the cold virus, things that don’t work like they’re supposed to, traffic
Things I can’t live without:
Money, my piano, internet access, good coffee, dark beer
Things I find interesting:
Finding out how things work, cryptozoology, unexplained phenomena like crop circles, true crime, advances in physics, ancient human history, the dinosaur debate, the awakening of the church to reality, the theory behind tai-chi and kung-fu
What I’d like to do in my free time:
Travel, camping (especially winter camping), snowboard, rock climbing, build things in the shop, fishing, scuba diving
Things I usually end up doing in my free time:
Surf the internet, work on this website, play piano, drink too much
Vices:
Cute girls, cigars, alcohol in its many delightful forms, big engines
Short term goals:
Move out of my crappy apartment into a highrise with a balcony, update all the dead links on this site, pay off my last student loan
Update - finally out of the hell-hole on Nicollet and am now living the sweet life with two wonderful girls near but not in the ‘burbs.
Long term goal:
Liquidate, buy a boat large enough to live in and head out to sea
A brief history:
I was born the first child to my parents and grew up in the schoolhouse of a tiny town called Roscoe, MN. Our house burned down over Christmas one year right after my brother, Adam, was born in 1978. After rebuilding on the original foundation, we lived there for many years. I had many childhood adventures growing up in the eighties. Going to school in Paynesville, BMX, blowing things up, treehouses and helping Dad in the shop were only a few of the things that kept me busy. My other brother, Kevin, was born when I was in the 5th grade; there’s twelve years between us.
When I was 13, we all moved to Woodland Park in Colorado, right in the middle of the school year. We were there for only a few months when my parents got a divorce. My brothers and I moved back with Mom to Minnesota to finish up 7th grade. My Dad ended up moving to Florida. My Mom had always been the “stay at home” type, and so decided to go back to nursing school. We moved to a trailer court in Rice, so she could go to school, and I started 8th grade at Sauk Rapids. My friend’s and I survived many experiences during our wild teen years, and friendships forged then still survive today.
I got my first job at the age of 14 playing organ and piano for the local church. It was a good first job and I made as much money as many of the adults in my neighborhood. I continued to play at many of the local churches, including Rice, Cold Spring, and Rockville until I was 19. Eventually church music got pretty damn old, and I wasn’t exactly the religious type anyway. In addition, I worked at Shopko for a number of years and at JCPenney in the jewelry repair department.
I started college at St. Cloud State University and started dating [the girl] whom I met while working at Shopko. While I was in my sophmore year, [the girl] moved down to the Twin Cities to start college. We put up with a year of this, until I decided to move to the cities so we could be together. We got an apartment and I started my junior year at the University of Minnesota while continuing to work at JCPenney’s.
In 1997, I started working at Professional Instruments Company [2], (the same place I work now), as a co-op student. During my final senior year, (after 4 years at the U of M), I started the TredSled project for a design class. After two years of many late nights, prototype construction and legalities of starting a business, Human Performance Systems was born and the TredSled [3] became a marketed item. Just before this, [the girl] and I got hitched.
Right after our marriage, [the girl] moved to Wisconsin to go to law school. I moved in with a college buddy who had a house in Richfield. When my roommate got married, I found a shitty little apartment in south Minneapolis where I live today. [the girl] and I struggled through two years of a long distance relationship and in the end decided that we’d be better off cutting our losses and moving on with life. So back in 2001, we got a divorce.
So in the last few years, I’ve managed to get myself out of debt, make up for lost time living the single life and continue to work and engage in the above listed activities.
Live life day by day, ‘cause who knows what tomorrow will bring. All we can do is seize oppurtunity when it presents itself and try to make the next day better than the last.