18 years (and counting) as a computer professional, primarily as a software guy. Lot's o' tinkering with hardware also. More personal background here.
Home is Lunenburg, Massachusetts; a small rural town of about 8k folk in the north central part of the state. Lots of trees, which we like. Friendly neighbors, and even a couple of relatives in the bargain.
Work is in Cambridge, Mass; a decidedly non-rural place along the Charles River across from Boston. Our new quarters are right between Technology Square (MIT,Polaroid,&tc) and One Kendall Square Technology Park. Guess that means we must be techies, right? If you want to know more about what I do there, here's a very short description. You might enjoy taking a look at the view out a colleague's window. (Or it might be a picture of something else entirely. We do try to have fun occasionally.)
Old passions are photography (all formats, all media from 8mm to 4x5, 1/2" to 3/4"), woodworking, canoeing (flatwater), tinkering w/soldering iron & small components. Recent passion is amateur radio; amateur callsign kd1sm; most bands, most modes; especially kd1sm@{145.45, 448.625}, ralph@kd1sm.ampr.org, kd1sm@k1ugm.#ema.ma.usa -- if you know, you know :-).
I'm president of the Montachusett Amateur Radio Association, treasurer of the Nashoba Valley Amateur Radio Club, and a member of the Nashua Area Radio Club and the Central Mass Amateur Radio Association. I sleep at least one night a month. Dan Senie asked me to be part of his team in the American Radio Relay League Western Massachusetts Section, which was quite an honor. During his term I was his Assistant Section Manager for data networking. As consolation prize, when Dan's term ended and he chose not to run for a second term I became interim Section Manager. Talk about work! Amateur Radio requires a license from the FCC before you can transmit. The license requires passing a written exam (and a Morse Code exam for higher-level privileges). The exams are given by Volunteer Examiners who certify to the FCC that a candidate successfully passed one of the exams. I'm one of those Volunteer Examiners, too. There's lots more Amateur Radio stuff out here on the Web. ( Here I am--on the right--doing one of the things for which I've discovered a liking. And here's what it looked like from my vantage point a short while later. No it's not mine, unfortunately. Tom WA1RHP is working on an educational and amusing narrative of the whole story.)
