About Me
I have lived a life shaped equally by engineering rigor and incurable curiosity. I’m a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Class of 1978 (B.S. in Aerospace Engineering, dual major in AE and Automatic Control Systems Engineering). Spent the early part of my career at Rockwell International, Northrop, and McDonnell Douglas, where (among other things) I served as a lead engineer on the verification of Space Shuttle avionics software — once built tools that saved Rockwell from what would have been a severe cost and schedule overrun. Since 2002, I have run an independent consulting practice from the San Francisco Bay Area, helping architects, furniture manufacturers, and a wide range of other clients with AutoCAD, CAD/CAM integration, CNC programming, and the kind of custom Excel and Word automation that makes people say, “Wait, you can make it do that?” I hold a Microsoft Office Specialist Master certification, have taught software and technology classes to over 900 students across more than two decades, and currently serve as a part-time Architectural CAD consultant and draftsman for a Sausalito, California Audio-Visual design and integration firm.
When I’m not building macros or teaching someone a better way to use a pivot table, I mentor high-school students as a U.S. Naval Academy Blue and Gold Officer. I am a lifelong Star Trek fan. In 1976, an Academy mate and I (on Glee Club tour) talked our way into a press interview with Gene Roddenberry at Equicon ’76 (it was completely legit — we both were staff members of the Academy’s The Log magazine). I am also a self-described in-demand West Coast Swing dancer. I have lived in Marin County, California, for over 25 years (OK, six of those were in the City of San Francisco). I’ve been a Type 1 Diabetic for over 48 years, and I manage it with the same systematic attention I bring to everything else. I have never met a piece of technology I didn’t want to take apart and understand.
