Profile: Ed Kelly

Personal background
I live in Bradenton, Florida (a small city between St. Petersburg and Sarasota on Florida's west coast).
I am retired, now, due to a heart attack. My last occupation was an emergency management coordinator for the Pinellas County Office of Emergency Management. Prior to working at emergency management, I was a firefighter/paramedic/haz mat technician for a local fire department. I left the job at the rank of lieutenant, after 14 years, due to a line of duty injury. I also worked as an emergency communications operator (911 operator) for 4 years.
I'm 54 years old, married twice; divorced once and widowed once. I have 3 children, all adults now (thank God) and 5 grand children. I have been through a variety of women since my wife died, but I haven't found Mrs. Right yet.
My hobbies are computers, reading, and street rods. I owned a company for 6 years that sold, installed, and repaired computers.
As for reading, I'll read anything that's not nailed down (and some that is). Recently, though, I've given up bathroom product labels because the text is usually too small for me to read anymore.
As for the street rodding, I currently have a 1934 Ford 3 window coupe with a completely chromed 350 Chevrolet engine. The car has won over 100 trophies.
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
Yes, I think it is narrow-minded to think that we are the only life in the universe (I was going to say intelligent life, but sometimes I wonder). I have no earthly clue as to when we will discover ET life, but I feel sure that it will happen. Probably, when our computers and other hardware becomes sophisticated enough to detect it. There are a lot of benefits and probably, I hate to say it, more dangers (mostly to the poor, unfortunate aliens). I don't know if we should transmit a "beacon" or not. I understand that all of our radio and television transmissions are permeating space for as long as those technologies have existed. If you were an alien, and you watched "Laugh In", a comedy show from the 60's, would you try to contact us? Maybe if they have a really great sense of humor, but that's not likely. If we transmit a beacon to other peoples, it should say: "WARNING, STAY AWAY! If you come here we will choke you with our chemicals and pollution; tax the crap out of you; cut you off and shoot at you in traffic; ruin you economically; and generally otherwise make you miserable. But, welcome to Planet Earth!" I run SETI@home to do something worthwhile with that useless pile of semi-conductors. I think the shared resources community is an excellent concept and I'm proud to be a part of your project. If I had any suggestions, it would be more newsletters and more information for your participants, which you appear to have addressed with the most recent edition. Thank you.
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