I grew up in the town of Smithtown NY. Smithtown is on the north shore of Long Island in western Suffolk County. I graduated from Smithtown High School East in 1979. Currently I reside in eastern Long Island, NY.
Growing up I was interested in automation and science. As a teenager I belonged to a Model Railroad club. I always liked the logic of railroading. In high school I also worked with computers and I went on field trips to places like the Grumman testing facility at Calverton, NY.
After graduating high school I went to work in construction with my father. I worked in construction for a few years, but I moved on to a more science oriented career in defense manufacturing where I started working in a machine shop manually cleaning metal parts and moved up from there to computerized machine tools. Unfortunately in the late 1980's jobs in the defense manufacturing industry dried up so I changed my career to something quite familiar to me, computer communications.
I married shortly after graduating from High School. We had 1 child, a boy, 8 years later. Like many of other marriages our marriage succumbed to the societal cancer known as divorce and we separated almost 2 years later after 10 years of marriage.
I am 43 years old now and disabled. I have a neuro-muscular condition that seems to be quite rare. I have gone for many medical tests that have broadly identified my condition as neurological, but none of the tests have specifically identified any disease like Multiple Sclerosis. Fortunately my condition has mostly just affected my legs. I must use a walker at all times now and I only get tremors in my arms and hands once in a while.
My interests are science, technology and railroading. I like science fiction movies and television shows like Babylon 5 & the Star Trek shows. I like how they present a practical use of technology in the future. I am also fascinated by communicating electronic devices and automation. Being disabled I have the time and personal computers have grown in power enough that I am learning digital multimedia.