I'm in Crestline, California (about 90 miles east of Lost Angeles, five miles west of Lake Arrowhead and 14 miles north of San Bernardino) at approximately 4900 ft. in the San Bernardino Mountains, surrounded by the San Bernardino National Forest. (No lawn to mow!)

Off-Road Experience

I've been off-roading and building my Samurai for some years now, and have enjoyed every minute of it. Except when it breaks…

Since I originally wrote this bio, my Samurai has taken me to all sorts of local trails, to the Rubicon for three consecutive years and to Moab once. I've met great folks on the trail, had a blast driving it, and am still adding, refining and tinkering.

I'm still no expert, and doubt I'll ever consider myself one. There's always something more to learn, a different trick to try, or another trail experience to (sometimes painfully, in terms of dollars or embarrasment) teach me something new.

Computer Experience

I'm an independent computer consultant, owner and sole employee of Petroglyph Computing, mostly dealing in networks and Windows NT/2000.

I started in this sort of stuff back in 1979 working for Codex (a data communications company), back when a dedicated line modem running at 9600 was about the size of a shoebox, had multiple boards, and cost in the mid five figures. Field service there lead to teaching data communications for awhile.

Made the move to California and went to work for a company selling hospital accounting software on Data General minis. Technical services was the game this time, and I ultimately ended up managing the department when two parts of the company split. After I laid myself off there (yep, you read that right), I went to work for DG itself. I provided both pre- and post-sales technical support in the form of network and large system design for both DG proprietary minis (can you say “AOS/VS”?) and their UNIX SystemVr4 boxes, again, mostly on the networking side.

Another lay-off later (every 5 years, whether I needed it or not) and I'm an independent consultant and loving it. My business is now nearly 10 years old, and pays the bills. All the PC stuff came along intermixed with everything else. HTML and the web became a necessity when I decided to volunteer in response to a request Dean Waters had on the original Suzuki pages he had set up.