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| Personal background |
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I grew up around the Detroit, Michigan area in the 1960s. After high school, I served in the United States Army while living in Giessen, West Germany until I eventually returned to Michigan in 1985.
After completing my military service, I entered the Avionics program at Ferris State College (Now a University) which took 2 years.
In 1987, I began working for a company called Mitsubishi Electronics. Although, my company has changed its name about five times, I am still working at the same place today.
I received my second Associates degree, Applied Computer Science in 1998.
My hobbies include Astronomy, Genealogy, Amateur Radio, Antique Radio Restoration, Recreational Shooting (firearms) and World Travel.
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| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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I have been interested in astronomy for my whole life. But, I live in Michigan under what we local astronomers call the Michigan Nebula (other people just call them clouds). My astronomical observations are restricted to nights without clouds which occur maybe 150 times per year. I can't stand cold weather, so I only go out if the temperatures are mild which excludes about half of the year when the sky is clearer. This brings me down to about 75 nights. Since I get up for work at 4 AM, I usually go to sleep before it gets dark. So finally, of those 75 nights, I can only observe on weekends. That brings me down to about 20 days in a good year. Then hopefully, I am not busy with something else on those nights. Luckily, I have many other hobbies to keep me busy.
Enter ET...
The famous “Drake Equation†basically says, I will paraphrase, “with the numbers of planets in the universe, there must be life out there somewhere.â€Â
Considering the magnitude of God's creation, I cannot imagine that he wouldn’t have created other images of Himself elsewhere in the universe. To think that we’re the only life in all the heavens would be the height of conceit. While each one of us is special in God’s eyes, his love and care are infinite.
Therefore, I believe beyond any shadow of a doubt, that there are other life forms out there among the stars. These life forms probably range the gamut from single-cell types to complex super intelligent beings. I don’t however, necessarily believe that any intelligent life forms spend their whole world’s treasury to build a space ship, fly a billion light years across the heavens to a small insignificant place that we call Earth so they can make a crop circle and then fly home.
One year while at the Dayton HamVention (A large Amateur Radio show) I attended the Saturday Banquet Dinner. The guest speaker was from a civilian group that was doing the same type of research that Seti was doing using old 8 or 10 foot satellite dishes and home brew equipment. This idea of doing astronomy work in which clouds don’t matter intrigued me. Of course, I did not have the room or the funds to actually get involved in this new area of astronomy. But, it did spark my interest.
Years later, in May 1999, when I heard about the new Seti@home Project, I just had to sign up. It was a simple way that I could get involved with a real project that was doing real work on the issue. It sounded fun and here I am.
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