About me...

...or more than you may have wanted to know!!

I could discuss quite a number of things here such as my interest in astronomy/mathematics and the Society for Creative Anachronism, but the links will lead you to pages which will tell you more about those areas. What I will mention here will be some of my other areas of interest and likes (such as my fondness for celtic and classical music as well as my taste for Indian and Cajun food). Another thing which will be shown here is my pride and love for my wife and daughter. Of course, there are other things which I will talk about here as well.

Well, I'm a proud Papa...

and since I am a proud papa...here is a picture of my daughter from Christmas '94 as well as a newer picture from Christmas '98. This last picture was taken at a local mall where they also sold the original image on a disk. Unfortunately, not having any way to scan things without using a friend's scanner, I do not have any other pictures of Avis (or Becky for that matter) available for browsing.

For those of you who do not know, my daughter's name is Avis Opal Needham (that is "Avis" with the 'A' sounding like in 'avid", not like the car rental place!), and she was born on August 19th 1994 at 3:06am. When born, she was 10 lbs 0 oz and 21.75" long. A month later, she was 12 lbs and 23" long. She is now nine years and is much larger! She is currently in the fourth grade, in the Gifted and Talented program run by the Columbus Public Schools. Fortunately, my Mother got to see her first year before she passed away from cancer in the fall of 1995 at the age of 55, but she would have been so proud of Avis.

And while I think about it...here is Avis's beautiful mother (IMNSHO) Becky Jo from a few years back! Unfortunately, the lack of a scanner has precluded my getting an updated picture for here.

CQ CQ DE KA8ZRT

Yes, I am an amateur (HAM) radio operator. A number of years ago, I managed to obtain my amateur radio license, and I currently hold a coded Technician Plus licence (yes, you guessed it...KA8ZRT). Since radios are quite expensive, I have been fairly limited on what I can do, and I currently have only 2m/440 capabilities, but I am building a 30m receiver kit from Ramsey and will probably be putting together a transmitter and receiver for 40m or 80m soon.

I have had my license for around 12 years now, and I have been involved with emergency services most of this time to some degree or another. In the past, this has included involvement with affiliation with county emergency services and groups such as the National Disaster Medical System (a joint effort of several federal agencies). I have also had experience as a member of a hazardous materials response team. My wife did not feel confortable with some of this, so I currently limit myself to being a weather spotter for the National Weather Service. Needless to say, I have seen quite a few interesting storms over the past 10 summers, including numerous funnel clouds (far fewer here in central Ohio compared to Fort Wayne, Indiana) and many magnificent lightning displays. Unfortunately, I am always too busy driving or keeping an eye out to take pictures and satisfy my photography bug.

Read a good book lately?

All three of us love to read. I figure that is why we have so many books. Besides technical books, I love to read Science Fiction and Fantasy books. I love to read books by many different authors, but among my most favorite authors are (not entirely in order):

Or have you seen a good movie or TV show?

Other than watching the news to keep up with things in the world, I watch very little TV. However, the few shows I tend to watch whenever possible include: I will also on occasion watch Smallville, which says quite a bit about the show. But those are movies...here are some of my favorite movies in recent years:

Chess

A noble and ancient game, all three of us like to play. At one point, I was quite good, but have found that I am also quite rusty right now, after not playing regularly since right before Avis was born. However, Avis is on her school chess team, and so I am clearing out the cob webs and dusting off my playing skills.

A Fragging Good Time

Chess is a thinking game, but sometimes, you feel like you need to play something which is less thinking and more "shoot from the hip". To satisfy this urge to "veg-out", I play a game called Unreal Tournament 2003. It fits with my liking of Science Fiction, and for the most part is a mindless way of killing both time and your best friends without someone getting hurt. I started out originally playing an older version of thsi game called Unreal Tournament with a few friends from work. One of these friends was a member of the original BEL Clan. For those of you not familiar with them, a ``clan'' is a group of folks who often play together as a team. I eventually joined this clan, and we had quite a bit of fun. However, the original clan broke up about a year ago, partly because of growing too fast, partly from ego/personallity conflicts between a number of the clan members, partly from changing interests, and perhaps partly because the clan tended to play a very individualistic form of the game called "Last Man Standing". Since the breakup of the original BEL clan, a three of us (myself, Ripley, and Spammy) wanted to continue the clan, while learning from the mistakes of the original clan. Over the past year or so, we have managed to grow the new BEL Clan by two other members (who at one point worked with Ripley and myself), but real life has kept us from doing as much as we wanted to do with it. A couple of us manage to play together about once a month or so, but we have not yet had much time to do more than this.

Last modified on $Date: 2003/11/24 04:27:14 $ by $Author: cinnion $