Who am I?
Last updated 12/17/2002
I’ll keep it fairly simple.
I am a 33 year old male living in Central Michigan with my Wife Pauline of several years.
I have a bachelors of science degree from Michigan Technological University. I’m working on my Professional Engineer’s license. I just have to take the test at this point.
Some past jobs have been Engineer at Ford Motor Company Powertrain engineering (industrial engines), GM Powertrain in Lansing, GM in Flint, a little rinky-dink electric motor outfit in Eaton Rapids, MI. While I like my job, I find there’s a lot more paperwork to do in engineering than I ever bargained for when I was attending school. Oh well, it pays the bills. That about covers the professional side of things. Other things I have done are wrench in a radiator shop, work for two contractors and built two houses for them, wash dishes (high school), and engineering intern for a power company.
Some of my hobbies currently:
Hobbies: Building / Restoring cars
Welding (just about anything)
Diesel engines
Building structures
Making tools/devices/inventions to save money
Computers / Building computers
Wood working
Motorcycling
Politics:
I’m about as conservative as they get. I REALLY don’t like those who strive to keep themselves in power by pitting the middle class against itself and dividing this nation which used to be great simply for greed. Not that I don’t love this country, but it’s been sailing along on inertia for a long while now.
Music:
I listen to your basic rock as long as it doesn’t have low moral values or bad language. I don’t need people screaming obscenities in my ear thank you. If it exhorts God in the message, so much the better.
TV/Movies:
I have gotten away from the seedier side of the entertainment business, and with little ones at home am now moving into cleaner adult fare. I particularly like SCI-FI, and will take that over most anything else. But I don’t spend that much time on entertainment anymore. Too busy.
Spare time:
I spend most of my time now on my family and my hobbies. Work is a given. I work too many hours. Not by desire, but by necessity. I have a little boy Jacob, who’s a lot of fun to be around.
Family:
I really enjoy spending time with my family. Both my wife and son are a lot of fun to be around. I have been married since 1995 to a wonderful gal who has most of the qualities I extol in life. I don’t think I could have done better without a lot of looking around. My son is my pride and joy. He’s definitely daddy’s boy. He’s nuts for trains. I have another child on the way. My daughter (we found out the sex this time) Rachel Lynn. She’s due in April.
My parents are one of the rare breed still married after over 35 years. I might have that number slightly wrong. My sister is married for the second time and lives about an hour away. Her husband is pretty cool. I get along good with them, much more so than in the past. I could barely stand her back in the old days. I think that has a lot to do with maturity. Laura also seems to have changed her outlook on life. She appears to value people and relationships more than she used to, that makes me pretty happy. The adversarial relationship we once had has been replaced by an adversarial-teasing one. I still get to say what I used to, but now she knows I’m kidding. (Hope you read this sis… J )
My brother is 4 years younger than I, and a 1996 West Point Graduate. We’re understandably very proud of him for that. He’s had a very tough time adjusting to our family. You see, we had a very rough childhood. My dad is a recovering alcoholic, and we had a hard time dealing with that. He could be very difficult and abusive at times. Everyone in the family had a different reaction to that. Laura rebelled, Matt and I withdrew. I have since forgiven Dad for all the things he did, I am not sure where Matt stands. He has a tendency to not communicate with us in depth, so I am not sure what he’s thinking most of the time.
He has a good group of high school friends, and keeps in regular contact with them and their families even at great distances. I envy him that. I barely speak with one member of my high school class.
Philosophy:
I am one of ‘those people’ that believe in the Bible and that’s it’s inerrant. I didn’t always. My parents never even took me to Church when I was growing up. I always believed I was a Christian because I lived in America. Isn’t everybody I’d always say? I believed there was a God, and that was about it. Don’t even know why. Just did. Well, I went about my life and just tried to be a good guy. After all, if you were good, you were rewarded, and went to heaven when you died. I grew up, got married, and started my career, just trying to be good, and hoping for the best. I had good days and bad days. Was never really satisfied though. Back in the days before the millenium turned over, I saw a TV show about prophecy at home one Saturday night. It was interesting, so I fired up the PC, and went surfing and did some research. About half of the hits I got on my trusty search engine were bible prophecy hits. I checked a few of those out and got to one that floored me. This website described exactly how I felt, what was going on in the world and how things would pan out for the rest of time. I couldn’t explain it at the time. At the end of the page, there was a little set of bible verses that hit me very hard. I had never seen such things before. They said things that contradicted my whole world view. Things like this:
I couldn’t explain it but when I read those bible versus, something stirred within me, and I KNEW that it was ABSOLUTE truth. I bowed my head and prayed that salvation prayer right then and there. It was the weekend before Thanksgiving, 1996. My life has never been the same. God sure takes care of his kids.
Since I have been saved, some miraculous things have happened. For instance, We were being sued by a town to the north of us. They had installed a pipeline down our road that was to carry sewage and dump it into a small creek to the south of us by a ½ mile or so. We had protested that since the deer and wild turkeys in the area would be affected, and hunting would diminish. We also didn’t like the idea of an open sewer in the area. The mayor of the town had decided to sue us for attempting to block his project, and they wanted damages for time lost. The estimates were over 50,000 dollars. We were having a very hard time with this, since we were just getting on our feet on the new property, and didn’t have any savings. We tried to work with them and get the suit dismissed, but the mayor was steadfast. We had to "pay" for our mistake of trying to block them. We spent a lot of time in tears and in prayer about this, and seemed to find a peaceful point. All would be well. We didn’t know how, but we knew God would take care of us. About a week later, we learned that the Mayor and his wife were in an extremely bad car accident and had been killed instantly. The owner of the construction company that did the pipeline install was killed not long after that in a freak helicopter accident. Beheaded. Not long after that, the new acting mayor of the town approached us about dropping the suit with no monetary outlay. Who says prayer is ineffective?
That’s the sum of the really crazy stuff. All kinds of little things happen in daily life though. The best decision I ever made was professing faith in Jesus Christ and placing my life in his hands. Life has never been the same since. It’s much better.