Who Am I?
Welcome to my personal web site. I am an electronic enthusiast from my earliest grade school days who was fascinated with dry
cell batteries, wires, switches, flashlight light bulbs and vacuum tubes from some old thrown away television sets. I totally amazed my 4th grade
teacher when she inspected my desk for neatness when I rigged a flashlight bulb to light up when she lifted up my desk lid!
It wasn't until my mother bought me my 1st vacuum tube experimenter's kit when I was in the 5th grade when I learned how they
worked and back then I was just finding the pins that turned on the tube heater circuit. Then came the pocket sized transistor radio!
The Silicon Transistor
When I was in Junior High School my uncle bought me a transistor experimenter's kit. It was amazing how tiny little silicon based
devices were replacing the big bulky vacuum tubes. I could assemble most of the same parts in different configurations on the breadboard and add
something different here and there to make an intercom, light flasher, photo light sensor and more.
By the time I had graduated high school, manufacturing an integrated electronic chip started to become the new normal. Radio Shack
become my number one stopping spot in the mall to see what was the next chip they had to teach me about the new digital and analog circuits.
A Microcomputer?
In the early 80's my life long dream came true. Affordable microcomputers hit the market, Timex-Sinclair, Atari, Radio Shack TRS-80 and the Commodore
Vic 20 were the most popular. I bought the Vic-20 because the reference manual you bought extra had a full working schematic of it's electronic
design and add-on peripheral devices were also affordable. I soon learned how to build digital circuits on a breadboard and then write a 6502 machine
language program to make it work. Apple was starting to take over the microcomputer market until IBM did the unthinkable and soon became the new
industry standard!
Now The Internet Is My Final Frontier..
I finally built my 1st basket case IBM compatible 286 computer in 1993 from cleaning out the basement of a database software
creation company I installed a phone system for. I started with MS-DOS 3.3 operating system and soon placed my current Commodore 64 into permanent
storage. Believe it or not my 1st PC did not have a hard disk, it booted from a floppy disk and I created a virtual RAM disk in which I'd then restore
from backup disks the program I was running at the time. Becasue of this, I learned more than the average PC user who used DOS.
By 1994 I finally aquired Microsoft® Windows 3.1 running on MS-DOS 5.0 and a 28.8k phone modem for a 386DX IBM compatible I
built from parts and logged onto the internet for the 1st time. Unlike most people, I didn't choose AOL, I choose a local internet provider Brad's Net
because they also provided 10mb of free web space to create a web site.
I had many PC's built up, but I couldn't obtain Novel networking software to connect them. Then come Microsoft® Windows 95 and I
discovered that it come bundled with network software. I soon learned how to set up a group of PC's to share files using a Microsoft® network protocol
over a 10mb coaxial thin-net cable. I could also share the printer on a PC with the other PC's on the network, that was useful. I also started to learn
Perl because it was used to create a dynamic web page although my Brad's Net web service didn't allow scripting. Then I discovered Microsoft Personal Web
Server for Windows® 95 and I created my 1st development web server for my personal intranet server configured it to use Active State Perl for Windows
so I could learn scripting.
It was taking me too long to learn how to create a web site so I cheated, I bought Microsoft® Publisher 98. A new feature would let
me save a publication as a web site and it even came loaded with many web site themes. I also bought Microsoft® Office 97 and learned how to create
extensive Excel spreadsheets to calculate the stats for the pool league I was running, copy and paste the results into an indentical table I created in
Publisher, save the publication as a web site and upload the files to my web site so league members could keep upto date.
My networking skills got better with Microsoft® Windows 98 Second Edition because it allowed me to share my dial-up internet connection
with all the PC's on my network. It also included the files to install the Personal Web Server from the installation disk using the "Add Features"
menu. Soon every PC on my network become a web development server! I also bought Microsoft® Front Page 98 to help me design websites and easily view the
code it was creating. I soon got the hang of coding HTML 4 using Notepad++ text editor and changed from Perl to PHP scripting. JavaScript was also starting
to become popular as well to work scripting processes in the browser. (Now every web page requires JavaScript!)
Windows 2000 gave me a more robust Microsoft® IIS web server for my developer servers and Windows® XP stabilized everything so
I'll fast forward over and skipping the totally worthless Microsoft® Vista disaster which required Microsoft® Windows 7 to save the day. Windows 7
did give me a more modern but very complex development web server to configure. Unfortunately thankls to other manufactures of "Smart Phones", seems
Apple has made a come back! Since desktop users started to decline in usage and Microsoft® cell phones can't seem to get into most folks belt clips,
Microsoft decided to turn the destop into a big "Smart Phone" when they brought Windows® 8 into play. Well we know how that went, it's now
called Microsoft® 8.1 and still no one is buying a Microsoft® Cell phone or a Desktop PC for that matter!
So now that in today's world no one uses a PC anymore to surf the internet, Microsoft® Windows 10 is trying to change that! (good
luck there!) Most people use Google's Droid based tablets like a Kindle Fire, Barnes and Noble Nook or a an Apple iPad. Could also be Apple iPhone, Droid
based Smart Phone or maybe a Windows Phone (Not!). But that's not all... it could also be a Smart TV or your security system touch screen! So now this old
dog is learning a new trick and this new version of my web site is using HTML5 and CSS3 which is supposed to work on ALL of these platforms.... my final
Frontier!