About your host...


The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play...


And that about says it all, doesn't it? The catch with this philosophy is the definitions of 'simplicity' and 'play' can be pretty complex by themselves. ;-)

Welcome to The Traveling Technoid, and thanks for stopping by! A couple of things to remember before I get into my (abbreviated) Life's Story.

If you came here looking for "cool graphics" or games, you're in the wrong spot. It is my firm belief that too much attention (and bandwidth, and disk space) has been given over to Utterly Useless Fluff on the Web, and much useful content has all but disappeared under a barrage of ads.

The only ads you'll find anywhere on my sites are a couple of fixed banners for the open-source software I use on our servers, and perhaps a few bookstores. I'm extremely picky about endorsing other products or services in any form, so the only vendors you might see ads for are those I would do business with myself.

In short, you'll find very few graphics of any kind here. What few exist are small, simple, and quick to load. I do this as a silent protest against the decreasing signal-to-noise ratio present on the Internet. If this disappoints you, then I invite you to investigate the many Web sites that are just chock-full of graphics (I understand Pepsi has more than their fair share of graphics bloat).

My background...

...Is as varied and colorful as a CD full of clip-art! Where electronics and computers are concerned, I've done a little of everything; Teletype machine repair, data communications and networking, 2-way radio, microwave, computers, microprocessors and microcontrollers, telephone systems, software coding... all are areas that I find myself comfortable in. In my off-hours, I'm an amateur ('ham') radio operator and shortwave listener (SWL). You'd be surprised what one can pick up, tuning around the HF bands. I ran Blue Feather Technologies as a full-blown home-based business from 1997 through 2012, and had such notable names as Lockheed Martin, Pratt & Whitney, and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) among my customers.

But, as stated at the top of the page, all work and no play makes one go quickly nuts. So, to counterbalance a fascinating (but pretty sterile) field, I maintain an active interest in things like wildlife photography, zoos and oceanariums and the critters they house, birds (particularly raptors), sound editing and effects, 'quality' silly humor and anything else which might catch my interest at any given moment.

I hold an Amateur Extra class "ham" radio license (KC7GR, formerly WD6EOS), an FCC General Radiotelephone license (with radar endorsement), and more manufacturer-specific and specialized certifications than I care to count (including NAUI Open-Water SCUBA certification). I also read (and, occasionally, write) fantasy and science fiction, and I was only four courses away from my A.A.S. degree before the local colleges dropped all the night courses I needed to finish.

I got laid off from Boeing around Christmas of 2002, after giving them six good years of my life. I was about fed up with IT and computing support in general at that point, so I made the decision to leave that field and return to RF and general electronics. After spending all of 2003, and the first two months of 2004, on the unemployment line as a result of that decision, I finally landed a civil-service slot with the Washington State Patrol's Electronic Services division. I've been there ever since, and it certainly beats the crap out of any IT job, including Boeing! Not only does it pay more, but it also gives me a fixed schedule, no on-call, and the chance to use ALL my tech skills instead of just a tiny subset of them.

I'm married, no children, and my life-mate knew darn well what she was getting into when she married an engineering tech (including the half-garage full of electronics, and my lab space) so don't ever let her tell you otherwise. You can catch her on E-mail by clicking here.

I stand 5' 11", stocky build, and have black curly hair and brown eyes. All other details are, to paraphrase Anne McCaffrey, subject to change without notice.

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Last Updated 21-Sep-13 by Bruce Lane