My wife Julie and I are the proud parents of 3 adult children. So far, we also have 6 grandchildren and the potential for more! We are extremely proud of each and every one of them – they are all unique and care deeply about our world. We were empty nesters for a while, and have reversed roles just a bit in the past couple of years as we’ve invited our parents into our home as they’ve needed a bit of extra help with their care. My mom was diagnosed with cancer and lived with us for 8 months or so before passing away, and just after that Julie’s mother passed away and we invited her father to live with us. His health hasn’t degraded as quickly as expected (macular degeneration was the primary concern), and with great care from the Houston Veteran’s hospital and a outstanding ophthalmologist, his health seems stable. We’re happy to help and pleased that we are in a position to do so.
I was employed with Texas Instruments (TI) as an engineering and operations professional for nearly 31 years and took advantage of an early retirement incentive offer in February of 2009 to “retire from TI” to pursue other interests – and for better or worse my interests are diverse.
We established a family business in mid-2007 as a platform for business experimentation. We’ve pursued quite a variety of areas all centered primarily around consumer-facing web automation:
- Online educational approaches for primary school participants (prior to mid-2007)
- Online family history
- Technology to enhance the quality of life for the elderly/handicapped
- Helping individuals manage/share/enhance their online identities (quiltid.com)
- Providing home seekers with a neutral online place to conduct their home search (homingbird.com)
- Providing recreational softball team managers with tools to organize, manage and track their team (softballapp.com)
- Managing large family photo caches
- Family History consulting services (most recently)
I attended Iowa State University for the first 2 years of my Electrical Engineering degree pursuit. I subsequently received my Bachelor of Science in Electrical (Computer) Engineering in 1982 from the University of Houston while employed with TI as a part of their Engineering Development Program. TI also afforded me the opportunity to complete my Executive MBA with Southern Methodist University (SMU) in 1996.
I exercise fairly consistently to maintain my health. I have read widely and continue to do so. I have a passion for computers and technology and believe we are only just scratching the surface on what can be accomplished in the area. As I have claimed previously in this BLOG, I enjoy writing, and have nurtured a long-standing desire to be an author which I may well satisfy at some point – we’ll see.
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