My wife In 1996 I met my wonderful wife, Pennie. Our initial contact was through a newsgroup for the author, Poppy Z. Brite. I think we were the elders in the group, which we no longer frequent. The fates caused us to correspond privately in August, 1997 and we soon realized we shared more than an interest in a little known horror author. After quite a few car trips between northern New Jersey and western Virginia and some pretty hefty phone bills, we decided to start a life together. We took the first steps and purchased a home and closed on it in late July, 1998. Not quite a year later, on 6/21/99, the summer solstice, we married.

Our Home We chose New Jersey to settle in, close to where I grew up. Our home is a wonderful, old Colonial Victorian built in the early 1920's. It's got great character and holds lots of promise. There's lots to be done and we're taking it slow. We're getting to know the house and it's getting to know us. We've done some painting, ripped up lots of carpets, put down some floor tiles in the kitchen, paid someone to put in a new wood floor in the living room, replaced a few upstairs windows and remodeled the dining room. The dining room remodel project included a new floor to ceiling bookcase along one wall, wainscot all around, crown molding, and a new floor tile border. In November of 2004, Pennie finished the back stairs project. It was completely repainted and braided stair treads were added. A painting of flowers done by my mom graces the landing on the way into the kitchen. We've got some projects underway and pending, but these are stalled at the moment.

Our Pets We've got quite a zoo here! I'm slowly adding pictures to the Photo page. When Pennie and I moved into our house in 1998, she arrived with 2 dogs and 2 cats - Chase, a lovely Dalmatian (also known as the Eubulubus); Molly, a Shepherd mix; Kahler and Nikki, the kitties. Nikki left us early in 2004 after a long cat life of alternating adventures and sleeping in warm spots. Chase became ill early in 2001 and sadly, she left us at the end of that summer. Before she passed away, she met Finnegan, our chocolate Labrador. Pennie's daughter, Melissa, moved back in with us in June of 2001, after a little more than a year in Virginia to finish High School. Upon her return, she brought a new cat into the fold, Severina. Just short of Christmas, 2001, we adopted a very porky Dalmation, Razz, from the Pequannock Animal Shelter. After a little while of good balanced meals and plenty of activity, she's nice and trim! Molly developed bone cancer in 2002 and she after removing the affected hid leg and several chemo treatments at Oradell Animal Hospital, she was in remission and doing great until the summer of 2004. In July, Molly developed another cancer on a front limb that took her from us on 9/11/04. 
Our smallest addition to the family arrived on 3/29/03 - Lily, a Dachshund puppy, a few days shy of 5 months old. Lily is the princess of the house, but since she's a clown, too, she is better known as "peanut." Lily experienced a back problem, unfortunately common to Dachshunds, in late September, 2004. Medication and strict crate rest got her back on her feet. We've had to gate the stairs now and she can't do stairs any longer, to minimize the chance of a reoccurrence.
Pennie is happily employed at Franklin Lakes Animal Hospital, so she lives and works with a whole lot of animals!
Another cat arrived on 11/14/04! He's a handful, too. At 9 months of age, he was not yet adopted from the many kittens taken in at Franklin Lakes Animal hospital. Since he was such a sweetie, Pennie decided we needed to bring him home to join our other 2 cats. Penguin was part of a litter brought in at only a few weeks old. They were the "Batman" litter, all named for characters from Batman's adventures. I don't think our Penguin is as evil as Batman's nemesis, though. He is a little crazy, especially at night when I'm trying to sleep, but he has acclimated quite well. Severina and Kahler are still a bit apprehensive about his antics, but they are no longer hiding under the bed to get away from him!
Another year, another pet. Pennie visited her parents for the New Year's holiday and she went with her dad to get a puppy for him on 12/31/04, promising that there would be no new dogs for us. They picked up a lovely little Boxer mix who is a sweetie, already housebroken, and a generally excellent dog. On 1/2/05 Pennie's dad reconsidered and realized that having a dog was a responsibility he wasn't sure he was ready for. Since Pennie had fallen in love with her, she couldn't let him decide to return the puppy, so a phone call to me cinched the decision. I expressed my misgivings, but relented anyway. Ruby is a sweetie, but as a puppy, we had wildness every day! We lost quite a few pillows and other items with her chewing. The living room dog bed succumbed to her teeth and I picked up a "chew proof" model from Orvis. It had a hole in it within 24 hours. She grew out of this bad habit, thankfully! Watching the girls and Finn curl up together after a rough day of playing is pretty cool.

Computers I've been involved in computers and computing since my first computer course at NYIT in 1974 or so. I have no idea what kind of mainframe power we were hooked into, but all programming was done via keyboard input into IBM Selectric terminals onto green bar paper. I was hooked after my first
    10 Print "Hello" 
programmed in good old BASIC. It was a few years before I could make computers my vocation, but I followed the amazing technological advances over the years with great interest. I've been with UPS since May, 1992. My current position is CIM Reliability Manager, which allows me to "play" with all kinds of computers and computing! At home, the network has gotten fairly extensive. In addition to my main computer, an HP m9077c, and Pennie's Gateway, I have a number of additional computers both in my office and upstairs in Pennie's old computer room. I've got secure 802.11b and 802.11g access points in operation and a wireless D-Link security camera in the basement. My latest cell phone is a Cingular 8525 running Windows Mobile 6. Pennie's cell phone is an Audiovox 5600 which runs Windows Mobile Smartphone edition. There's an MSNTV2 unit connected to the network and the bedroom TV and 240 gigs of drive space in a Snap Server Network Attached Storage device.
Thanks to my participation in Microsoft Beta programs over the years, I was nominated and named a Microsoft MVP for MSN.com in October, 2004. I have been re-awarded annually since then, with my current award in the area of Windows Live. I am a moderator at Computer Haven, a web site geared to help people learn computers. I also moderate the Windows Live OneCare forums for Microsoft.

Music Almost as important to me as computers, music is critical to my existence! I've dabbled with playing guitar, bass, and singing. I'm most certainly a listener and a collector. My CD collection is rather eclectic and fairly large, rivaling a small store or radio station, I believe. I have also amassed an extensive MP3 collection to augment the CD copies. They take up a fair amount of hard drive space, but that's much better than the floor space used by the physical CDs. I picked up an Audiotron unit on eBay and can stream MP3s from the network to the living room stereo. Turtle Beach no longer manufactures this unit, but I decided to get one as it does not need any software installed on the computer to access any MP3 files on the networked computers. I also have a Neuros Audio Computer, which is a hard drive based MP3 player with an FM transmitter, although it has been relegated to storage for now. In 2006 I picked up a Microsoft Zune, which is a great little unit. My days of concerts and clubs have mostly passed, but music is still with me in a big way. Some of my favorites are an acquired taste and others are quite mainstream.