I was in the United States Air Force for 7 years stationed in Germany, England, Virginia, Korea and Nebraska before becoming a UNIX System Administrator. I commuted to Wichita, Kansas for 14-months building a Data Center there, and was once an IT Manager for 18 months in Saint Louis, Missouri, but my love is for for systems, not end users.
I love classical music, operas, musicals, and soundtrack scores, as well as goa and a variety of other music. As I have experienced so much of life, I generally fall back on the outcome of those experiences when faced with difficult decisions and have a tendency to disregard those around me who have not. I have a small list of shortcomings beginning with a general lack of empathy/compassion and ending with intolerance.
I know more about the Power Ranger franchise than most men my age, because my son loves them and I love my son. I enjoy playing and reading with my son and avoiding playing dolls with my daughter. A father loves the hugs only a daughter can give.
I collect die-cast Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars & Star Trek ships and love old B-Body Chrysler cars of which I have a rather extensive die-cast collection of. I run Solaris and OSX at home and game on XP. I build all my own computers and banter extensively with drax0r.
I have been married 9 years and cannot imagine living my life with anyone else. We both enjoy smoking fine cigars and drinking Pilzner Urquell, the original golden beer. We enjoy buying entire seasons of great shows on DVD and watching them back-to-back. I've been told I'm the luckiest man alive where it applies to my spouse and I tend to agree.
I am almost always in a fantastic mood, believing I've only gotten this far in life with my attitude alone. I've worked for my current boss on and off for 9 years now. He takes care of me, and I try to take care of him. He told me once, "I'll take someone with the right attitude anytime over someone with the right skillset and a bad attitude, because you can always train someone in a skillset, but a person with a bad attitude never changes." One of my most-oft quotes is from Calvin Coolidge:
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not;
nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will
not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the
world is full of educated failures. Persistence and determination alone
are omnipotent.
I've loved every job I've ever had and work very hard at whatever I'm doing. I tend to disassociate myself with people who have negative attitudes or those who are terminally in a bad mood.
I, for one, enjoy life.
*Live Well, Love Much, Laugh Often*
I am a prolific blogger at
http://ehowton.livejournal.com and when I moved back to Texas from Saint Louis, through a series of unfortunate events, drax0r and I both ended up in Anna, Texas and decided to stay. "I KNOW JOHN GEREN!" Through Mr. Geren's prodding and charismatic charm, I am now getting a toe wet in local politics and currently sitting on the Anna Technology Advisory Commission. I had a gorgeous custom home in Wise County prior to leaving Texas which is why I chose Pecan Grove - felt a lot like Boyd, Texas, except I'm 8-minutes to work (on a good day) rather than an hour and a half.
My goal, is to one day get all of Pecan Grove on the forum, then all of Anna.
PECAN GROVE REPRESENT!
