autobiography

I believe this is the picture that got me interested in dinosaurs, and from dinosaurs, I became interested in paleontology.

For several years, 2007-2018 perhaps, I would answer any call that reached my cellphone. I wanted to understand the scams, I wanted to know how such hollow, bullshit constructs worked.

My mom told me a story about going to the circus when she was a kid.

She was very excited, because one of the acts was a Trained Rhino!

Summer, 2019, before the pandemic.

I was working in a “open plan” office, albeit a very pleasant one in downtown Denver.

Once, I met Scott Carpenter, one of the Original 7 Astronauts.

When I was maybe 11, some folks bought the hillside north of my parents’ house. The head of this new household, named Monte, had a 1940s bulldozer. He carved out the hillside to create a flat zone, maybe half an acre, for their house.

As part of putting in a dwelling, Monte and some friends and/or relatives dug a well in that flat zone.

I grew up in Kirksville, Missouri, the largest town within an 88 mile radius. Had to go to Hannibal, or Quincy or Columbia to get to a larger town.

But I’ve also had a life-long love of Bob Marley’s reggae music.

This is the book that led me to a bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering:

I read George Orwell’s 1984 sometime during “Junior High”, which in the 1970s was what we now call “middle school”. My district, Adair County R-III, had grades 7, 8 and 9 in their own building.

The school library had a copy of 1984. I was busy reading a lot my 7th and 8th grade years, so I read it.