WELL! since you asked/opened the door:
I loved me my StarGate home automation computer which was rock-solid, from 1997 through early 2025 (when I made the switch off it and onto HomeSeer 4). I began migrating off of StarGate and onto Homeseer, choosing Z-Wave and Zigbee mesh networking to control all of the electronics. It is a work in progress. StarGate continued to run properly and invisibly even while I amputated appendages of it, right up until I jumped the shark to HS4 in early 2025. Currently creating templates for android tablets and enabling voice controls.
I'm "very" techie in nature if you haven't grokked.
I taught myself to use a real-time C++ compiler called DataEase while I was a stressed-out director of pharmacy in the hospital in Uvalde, Texas. My cheapskate hospital administrator screwed me by hiring me, knowing that in just 6 weeks the medicare inspectors were going to tear the hospital (and the Walmart pharmacist running the "pharmacy") a really big one. He used to let the doctors come into the pharmacy and use a paper bag to SHOP for anything they wanted. So, there I was, no way to hire another warm body/pharmacist/technician to begin to resolve what was the second-highest number of deficiencies the inspector had EVER written in Texas. The software became a key way I could meet the legal and professional requirements all by my lonesome. 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 installed by me (less one original installation) in more then 250 hospitals from 30 beds to over 900, in 46 states of the union. While I was traveling to these states to build PCs, generate pre-internet Novell networks, create Citrix thin-client networks, develop drug master files for each hospital, write on-the-fly enhancements for unique requirements of THAT particular hospital and of course, 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 but NOT breaking the copper, and alligator-clipping my 1200-baud, then 2400-baud and finally as a US Robotics beta tester, 4800-baud 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!).
In order to visit each hospital (about 100 of them 2 or 4 times as part of a nationwide chain), flying from Robert Mueller Airport in Austin and then from the "new" airport (Bergstrom AFB reincarnated) I racked up 2.4 million miles on AA alone, plus another million+ on SW and Delta, pocket-change on United, during this 20+-year period. I am a DOUBLE-lifetime Platinum on American. :) no baggage charge, and they pretend to know me when I check in on the red carpet every year or two....
I WAS the president of the Texas State Archery Association and attempted in a deluded attempt to grow it to be the biggest and best in the world. A post I kind of extorted, based on a decade of volunteership as the:
Founding and singular webmaster. (My last month I had 1 million unique IP address hits, from more than 128 countries, using the website as a compendium encyclopedia for all things Olympic archery.
Singular Newsletter Author and Producer for more than 15 years with several hundred issues published
Singular Online Tournament Registrar, years ahead of any other state association of the NGB, USOC's USA Archery. That means we were doing online tournament management and registrations years before EVEN the USA Archery, little ol' Texas State Archery
For Six + years I was USA Archery's Records manager and coordinator, CERTIFYING correct and then generating the webpage updates and uploading it to USArcheryRecords.org (use the wayback machine) instantly and sending PDF National Record certificates with a completely automated process, and in MY WEB expertise, I showed the previous record holders as well as the NEW record holder, demonstrating the upward path of excellence of American Archers.
Tournament director for State 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 Competently in carpentry, plumbing, electical (110v and 230v), masonry, all in all I feel I am what is known as an expert generalist.
Automation throughout a 3 story home 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 1825 (G.G.Grandfather John Jordan Simpson - plantation owner and (I apologize) 500,000 plus mandatory employees), and my G. Grandfather Alberta Aldrich 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 linear 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', same year as I got my Single-engine Pilot's rating. 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. (One Semester I carried 24 hours including biology, 2nd semester Inorganic Chemistry + lab, Organic Chemistry first semester + lab, and Physics I also got a first degree brown belt in TaeKwanDo Karate and in Kodokan Judo from sensei Lonnie Green, 7th Dan Kodokan Black Belt, 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 be admitted to the college of pharmacy with only one pre-requisite of calculus which I took summer '75 from a professor who wrote with his right hand on a real chalkboard, erased simultaneously with his left hand, speaking in farsi all the while. So for the first time in my LIFE, I garner a D. This means that when I appear for Fall Pharmacy classes, the DEAN meets me to let me know I will be allowed to take classes but I will be ON SCHOLASTIC PROBATION, and if I do not make the grades I will be cast out of pharmacy school. No Sweat. I spent as much time hurling a frisbee on the quad, and managing the UT Tennis Courts at the intramural field, as actually studying (But I LOVED the content of the courses and many of the professors - Jaime Delgadod was my most feared, and Bill Sheffield was my favorite. BOTH were contemporary classmates of my father in the early 50s. So, after spending too much time at the Armadillo World Headquarters, I 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 pharmacistsin 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. (NO) I survived there for over 5 years and in many ways it the best pharmacy (aside from my father's Rexall Drug Store) that I have ever worked in, and I retired from there in 2024. My BP at my PCP prior to leaving practice was 140/90. 4 months later, at my PCP for my annual, my bp was 128/66. No MEDS. Just not worrying every 3 minutes that I was going to harm or kill someone with a mistake from genZ technicians or myself failing to catch their mistakes. I LOVED the clientele, average age of 70+ years - they listened to me and took advice well. I dearly miss my interactions with those deserving people.
I switched from a hybrid car to a Tesla Model Y OMG in 2021, and now find myself with a garage full of tools I will never need again! Have had it 76K miles as of Fall 2025 and I've had to rotate tires. buy a new set, and refill the windshield wiper resevoir several times. That's it for maintenance. 37 mile one-way commutes cost 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, 1973, ultra-light pilot since 1984 (Quicksilver MX) I soloed with 7.7 hours at age 17..
Extraneous interests (on my list of things to get better at) include: windsurfing,
delta-wing hang-gliding plus parapente hangliding, home automation (a good
page to start with), alpine downhill skiing, jetskiing, and of course,
basket weaving).
We have now retired. Me, after 45+ years of pharmacy practice. (Practice means you never *quite* get it right). Gina, after 48 years as an RN (though unlike me she is still registered), and 25+ years as the only RN for Lago Vista School District, where she does some fill-in for the THREE nurses they hired to replace her.
THE NEXT CHAPTER IS TO BE WRITTEN.