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| Personal background |
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Born 1955 and raised in Texas, my two long term life loves are FTL space exploration and Harley choppers. (There's a deep connection there, trust me.) And I am a member of an American biker brotherhood.
My first degree plan was theoretical physics. For some foolish reason I wanted to find in common matter a way to fuel a star drive. Young and idealist, I thought I would realize that technology in my lifetime. Oh well... Councilors finally talked me into engineering. My professional fields are full time mechanical engineer in the drilling business, and a computer network engineer on nights and weekends.
As far as hobbies go, I play guitar, bass and some keyboard. I am currently searching eBay for a 1960's era Leslie cabinet. I also have a medium size home recording studio that I and my adult kids use to record, mix down and archive our efforts.
I restore and repair vintage Harley-Davidsons and recently learned the German language, up to 20 wpm Morse Code, and earned my Extra Class Radio operator's license. |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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Since I can remember, my favorite scifi books and films deal with the awe and implications of first contact. I grew up with the Outer Limits and the original Star Trek in the 60's, still two of my favorites. When I stumbled across Seti@home in May of 1999 I became a fanatic on processing work units. To be part of such an undertaking rekindled the idealism I had at one time to explore space. I am still processing, but not at the rate I was a few years ago.
Given the vastness of the universe and the enormous time line, it would be insane to suggest that life only exists on this one world. However, I do believe objects that have exactly the right mix of elements to support life are indeed rare. Throw in the time factor and it could be centuries or millenniums before we encounter a signal from another form of life. Eventually we will.
I argue with those who say, "What if they are hostile." They very well could be, but it makes no difference. We already have our collective fly unzipped radiating like a 100-watt bulb over a mosquito pond, so if there is a hostile life form close enough to notice, we have already invited them over for a raid. But, since space is so vast, our first message might be, "We'll see you in 700 million years!" Just finding a foreign distant signal of any type would change the way we look at our presence here.
I think the seti distributed computing model is a fascinating idea, and it fits my wish to be part of the search of the universe for life. That, as William Shatner says is our final frontier -- and we were born to explore. Otherwise, as far as exploration goes, it's wherever my Harley takes me. |
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