WELL!  since you asked/opened the door:
I loves me my stargate.  Even though it, and two other backups, have become mute.  :Update - in 2021 I began migrating off of StarGate and onto Homeseer, choosing Z-Wave mesh networking to control all of the electoronics. It is a work in progress. StarGate continues to run properly and invisibly even while I amputte appendages of it.
I work under the influence of a mistake.  I'm "very" techie in nature.  
I taught myself to use a real-time C++ compiler called DataEase while I was a stressed-out director of pharmacy in a hospital in Uvalde, Texas.  It is/was a relational, 4th-generation database that was immensely, incredibly powerful and flexible.  I contributed more than 50% of the coding to the product that was marketed to hundreds of hospitals from 30 beds to over 900, in 46 or 47 states of the union.  While I was traveling to these states to build PCs, gen Novell networks, create Citrix thin-client networks, develop drug masters, and train both pharmacists and technicians in the use thereof. And added custom enhancements to live databases all the while.  
I was also a sysop for CompuServe (<flashback>), a designer of bulletin boards for fee (!), while I was on the road. I took inordinate pride in connecting in from bars in airports by slicing the cable, baring the copper, and alligator-clipping my 1200-baud, 2400-baud and 4800-baud(beta testing for US Robotics<G>) modems in my sewing-machine-size "portable" 386-SX with math coprocessor add-on and a daughter-board of 16K chips, taking up to a lawdy-lawdy 1024 K of RAM (extended RAM, hallelujah!).  
I racked 2.4 million miles on AA alone, plus another mil on SW and Delta, pocket-change on United, during this 20-year period.  I am a lifetime Platinum. :) no baggage charge, and they pretend to know me when I check in on the red carpet every year or two.... 
I'm currently the president of the Texas State Archery Association.  A post I kind of extorted, based on a decade of volunteership as the:  
Founding and singular webmaster
Singular Newsletter Author and Producer for more than 15 years
Singular Online Tournament Registrar, years ahead of any other state association of the NGB, USOC's USA Archery.
Six-year+ USA Archery's Records manager and coordinator
Tournament director for Target and Field Championships
Certification as one of the highest levels of coaching recogntion, Level IV-NTS Training Coach as well as High Performance Coach.
First US Recipient for the recognition of coaching excellence by the US Olympic Committee (USOC), the Ikkos Award, in the discipline of archery.  There are only three other coaches to have ever received this honor for archery coaching excellence.
In the duration, I have also
Finished Competent in carpentry, plumbing, electical (110v and 230v), masonry, all in all I feel I am what is known as an expert generalist.
Automation throughout using RCS modules, X10, RS-485 low-voltage components, Motion Detectors, Magnetic relays and sensors, with JDS Tech's Stargate as the brains.

Original Document:

Professional Information/ BIO

I was born in a log cabin in.....waitaminnit, wrong story. Okay, I'm from south Texas, Uvalde to be exact., so I am prone to talk with a um, slight accent.    Mah forbears arrived and settled between St. Augustine and Nacogdoches around 1820 (G.G.Grandfather John J. Simpson), and my GGrandfather Alberta A. Nelson of Massachusetts arrived in 1836 in Nacogdoches (became Mayor), and have settled in various parts of Texas since then. I've lived in San Antone, Dallas, Round Rock, Uvalde, Killeen, and Austin since college, and find the hill country to be nearly perfect for my lifestyle, so we have built  a nice home in Lago Vista, 18 miles from downtown Austin.  Kind of like having yore cake, and french fries too.

I grew up in a real Rexall Drug Store in Uvalde, complete with soda fountain and small-town benefits. Somehow I remained sane and gradjiated (there's that Texan accent agin) High School in 73'. I stayed in Uvalde for a couple of years, attended a junior college, and got most of my pharmacy pre-requisites out of the way.   I also got a first degree brown belt in TaeKwanDo Karate and in Kodokan Judo from sensei Lonnie Green, largely as self-defense from all of the republicans that I matriculated with. (Enrollment was about 1000 people: 999 rednecks and me). Somehow I was able to graduate from the University of Texas in 1978 from the UT College of Pharmacy with a B.S. (seemed a fitting term, somehow). I spent my last year in San Antone at the UT Health Science Center where I received excellent clinical training as a hospital pharmacist.

I have practiced pharmacy in independents, chain stores, apothecary, large hospitals (>600 beds) and small hospitals (<100 beds). Also directed the services for a small hospital for 4 years, and learned to design databases and build/program computers in my spare time. Co-authored a dynamic comprehensive pharmacy management system called Rx-Link , using DataEase, a 4th-generation relational RAD tool (See Wikipedia). RxLink was perhaps the largest PC-based computer tool for running a hospital pharmacy, in terms of reports and features.  I retired as a consultant for DataEase applications a few years back. .

For more than 20 years, I provided custom programming solutions and training in PC operations. I've logged more than 2.4 million miles with American Airlines, am a life-time platinum member with platinum membership in AA, Marriott Marquis Platinum, gold standing with Hurts, er, Hertz., traveling to hospitals around the YewEssHay (47 states) and Canada. I've personally trained pharmacists in more than 250 hospitals and analyzed pharmacy practices in those hospitals in order to customize their softwares.

I obtained certification in sterile compounding, and then taught myself how to lyophyllize medications for sterile injection, designed and set up a working "high-risk" sterile compounding lab and ran it for two years, producing a variety of medications. Every batch was tested for both accuracy and sterility prior to release. Only once did one of my batches fail the independent lab's testing, and thanks to their forensic DNA methods, their own tech was identified as the source for the contamination, so I was 100% excellent in this role.

Seeing on the horizon a horrible (but necessary) tsunami of regulations being promulgated for such sterile compounding (Oh, I was also performin non-sterile compounding very happily), I decided to semi-retire and just do steady PRN pharmacist practice. After a few years, I was offered a PIC (Pharmacist in Charge) position at a pharmacy in a medical clinic and decided it would be fun. I've been there for over 5 years and it's the best pharmacy (aside from my father's Rexall Drug Store) that I have ever worked in, and as of September, 2022 I still am there. I've guaranteed to staty for a few more years, when Gina and I will both retire to begin a new chapter.

Switched from a hybrid car to a Tesla Model Y, and now find myself with a garage full of tools I will never need again! Have had it for over a year and 26K miles and I've had to rotate tires and refill the windshile wiper resevoir several times. That's it for maintenance. 37 mile commute costs me about 90 cents in electricity. Trying to keep my "safety score" above 96% on the Tesla, wish I had bought one years ago but I am also delighted I waited until the Model Y came out as it is as roomy as my Saab 900 Turbo was. I

ARC's mugshot, made by a friend from the CTPCUG back in the early 80s (Central Texas PC Users Group)

Topics of Relation:
Eagle Scout/Bronze Palm
Alumnus of Colorado Outward Bound, C-92 (If you have done COB, I'd love to hear from you!)
Hitchhiked Europe/exchange student to Dalarna, Sweden - 1972 at 17 years age
Hitchhiked YewEss, 1973
Certified Scuba OpenWater, 1974 - preference for Roatan and SABA (1998)- CocoView Rules!
Single-engine rating, 1971, ultra-light pilot since 1984 (Quicksilver MX) I soloed with 7.7 hours at age 16..
Extraneous interests (on my list of things to get better at) include: windsurfing, hang-gliding(parapente, home automation (a good page to start with), alpine downhill skiing, jetskiing, and of course, basket weaving).
Back to Home Page

 

​​