You've found my home page on galacticvoice.org. This is a slightly updated version of a static page I was using on members.cox.net to mess around with CSS quasi-frames until they pulled the plug on personal webspace. The sidebar consists entirely of links to various non-profits that may be worthy of your attention. Want to know more about me? Check out my resume or my blog.

A fair amount of my time over the last few years has been dedicated to growth and development. My initial introduction to an ontological inquiry was through Omega Vector which is a non-profit program created in 1978 by the late George Addair. More recently, I've been participating in transformational work available through Landmark, particularly Wisdom Unlimited. I'm cuurently doing Wisdom again and I'm unfolding games around the commitments I've identified:

Have you seen "The Story of Stuff" by Annie Leonard? If not, you should go here and check it out. There's a 20 minute animation that really brings home some points about what our culture is doing to the environment and the planet. She also has a new video called "The Story of Cap and Trade", available on the same site. Gave me something to think about. I really hope she gets her message out. We all need to think hard about our choices, since the future of life on planet earth hangs in the balance.

I'm definitely a fan of everything created by Joss Whedon, but there's no need to fill this site with links to references of his work. The top link in the sidebar is to Arizona Browncoats, a Firefly fan club I belong to, and they do a great job of providing links to everything interesting in the Whedon 'verse. They're also the non-profit that puts on the "Can't Stop the Serenity" event each year that supports Pappas Kids. Seems like the most current info is actually on their FaceBook

The homepages of the folks that built the Unix, C and the internet are now gone, although you can still read about some of them, like Ken Thompson, Dennis M. Ritchie and Vint Cerf.

I'm also a big fan of open-source and free software. Free as in free to run, study, redistribute and improve the software. The link in the sidebar that looks like a yak goes to the GNU site, and there's a ton on info there on the subject. The FSF folks are a little zealot about the whole thing, but that's a great place to start. And of course, SourceForge is the go-to place for the open source software world.

Books

Ocasionally, I read. A few of my favorite books and authors are listed below. The link in the sidebar that looks like a printing press is to Project Gutenberg. It provides links to really important works of literature in the public domain.

There are some books that have been valuable at one time or another in my time spent with electronics, computers and the Internet - a few of which are still actually available on the Internet, like Zen and the Art of the Internet by Brendan P. Kehoe where I learned internet manners back in the dark ages. Still seems relevant.

I still have my dad's copy of the 39th edition of the "Handbook of Chemistry and Physics", published the year I was born. Amazingly still useful. The 100th edition is now available on-line here for a price. "Digital Computer Electronics" by Dr. Albert Malvino was a great intoduction to microcomputers at the dawn of the PC, and there was a time I thought it was almost as indispensable as the Texas Instruments TTL Data Book, of which I had hard cover, soft cover and pocket editions. I let them go along with the rest of my databook library assuming that this information would always be available on the web, but I'm no longer sure that's the case. I think I wore the cover off of PC Magazine's DOS Power Tools, and it came with a floppy filled with little utilities that served me well for several years. I think I got my money's worth out of "Java 1.1: The Complete Reference" by Patrick Naughton and Herbert Shildt, and I can recommend "Java in a Nutshell" by David Flanagan. I've read a few titles from the Head First series, including Design Patterns. Well worth the read, and much easier to digest than the original GoF works I'm told.

I'm also a fan of Stephanie Meyer, J. K. Rowling, Tom Robbins, Ram Dass, Samuel Clemens, and Kurt Vonnegut. Here's an interesting collection of quotes by Vonnegut, and Twain is frequently quoted as well, but not nearly as much as Shakespeare.

Music

I spent a good portion of the 80's chasing the Grateful Dead around. After Jerry died, the obsession waned but I still caught a few jam band shows and the occasional festival. Much of that music can be found on archive.org, see the link to the left. My wife Susan and I really enjoyed the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.

Blogs

There's likely to be some social media links somewhere on this page from time to time (like facebook or twitter), and maybe a few links to "real" blogs I enjoy reading. For instance, here's the Van Clan's colletion of blogs on van life

Scouts

Did you notice the BSA logo in the sidebar? Yes, I was a scout. An eagle scout. To this day, some of my fondest memories are scouting events - Philmont in particular. It's a real working ranch on 137,000 acres of rugged New Mexico wilderness. It's "High Adventure" and an opportunity for kids to test their limits and learn a lot about themselves and the outdoors. I get the current controversy, and yet I would be really sad to see them go.

Testify

Anyway, this being something of a soapbox in the middle of an empty parking lot, I feel compelled to climb on top and speak my piece, or peace as the case may be. I think we all need more peace - I know I do. My grandfather was a Baptist minister, so it shouldn't be strange that my beliefs are wired to Christianity. I may not be a "praise and worship, full-on blood of the cross" kind of guy, but I'm no athiest, and I let go of the "you have to be wrong for me to be right" thing a long time ago. My belief in God, Christ and the Holy Spirit as aspects of the Creator of the Universe does not mean that I have a problem with you believing in whatever doctrine or Higher Power you choose. God is Love (1 John 4:8). Christ is the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galations 5:22-23). If we're all on a shared spiritual journey, violence and hatred would seem to be counter productive. A number of links in the sidebar are about tolerance and the idea that differing religions can coexist. Live and let live. Give peace a chance. All you need is love.