I work at Peak Internet, a local ISP in Corvallis, Oregon. I also run a small ISP in Portland, Oregon, called RainDrop Laboratories. It started in 1985 as a public access system called Agora, while I was working at Intel. Been a lot of changes since then, believe you me! And on top of that, for a while, I was the part time system administrator for Sawnet, a local ISP in Stevenson, WA.

Apparently, I just can't get enough of ISPs...

In late 1999, my group spun out of Intel to form a small startup called "PassEdge". At the end of 2000, we were sold to Intertrust, which then had layoffs every quarter after until the Portland office was closed entirely in early 2002. I got the axe in August, 2001, and decided to devote full time to running RainDrop Laboratories. Since that proved that I'm a better sysadmin than marketer, I joined Peak in April, 2004.

In the summer of 1999, I bought a house, and among the many projects that I did on it are a maple floor and a home theater (finished). Getting the projector installed was something else again! Outside, in the summer of 2002, I had some landscaping done (before, after). I also worked on an N-gauge model railroad layout, but had to move that into a smaller room, and finally had to give up on it entirely due to lack of space and time. I also replaced the floor in my office. A house is definately a black hole with a green ($$$) streak flowing into it...

In Corvallis, however, I rented the house in Beaverton out to some friends who were planning on buying it, and I rented a place while trying to decide what to do next... What to do next, when they ended up buying another house, and I then sold it for way more than I expected, turned out to be a house near work in Corvallis, proving again, the comment above about $$$ -> black hole! So much for the profits from the house in Beaverton (of course, the EV, the macbook pro and the mac pro didn't help either!). I've been working on the landscaping there too...

From time to time, I get involved in gay rights activism, but Oregon's been pretty quiet since Lon Mabon faded from the scene. Thank His God! What a bozo! I was very pleased to see that the Libertarian candidate got almost half again as many votes as Mabon did in the 2002 Senatorial campaign. I've commented more on this and other things in the "politics" section. I do have to say that if there is an afterlife, people like him are going to get a very deserved and unpleasant shock. Unfortunately, it seems the bigots who think that treating people fairly is "special rights", don't mind special rights for themselves when it comes to marriage, and are trying to get Oregon's domestic partner law repealed. A major waste of everyone's time, money and energy if that gets on the ballot!

On more pleasant matters, one place I enjoy on occasion is Bagby Hot Springs, though it's such a trek that I put in my own hot springs in Beaverton (well, ok, the "springs" are recirculating, and PGE keeps them hot, but it's still a good soak, and I'm working on improving the surroundings!). I haven't done it yet in Corvallis, still working on basic landscaping, though I've just started thinking about ideas for a little recirculating stream in back.

I like to travel, which made it particularly nice that Intel sent me to Germany twice in 1984 right after I hired on, plus Atlanta and Disneyland that winter (to put together the trade show demo of the product I'd worked on in Germany). They didn't send me anywhere interesting until 1998, when I got to go to Munich for an Internet conference, and Las Vegas for a broadcasting conference in 1999 when we started playing with distributing multimedia over the Internet.

In October, 1994, to celebrate hitting 10 years with Intel and getting 4 weeks of vacation, I used 3 of them to go on a Grand Tour of the West. I am (still) in the process of filling in the itinerary with a description of what actually took place, and linking in pictures taken along the way. Don't expect Travels With Samantha, but hopefully it will be interesting anyway. In September 1997, I took a couple weeks to visit the Canadian Rockies, and the next year went to Hawaii. I went to England in 2001, and returned to Hawaii in 2002, this time to Maui to visit my friend Chris, and again in early 2006, after a job working with him fell through. Most recently, I went to England to visit Joel ( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ).

As you can tell, I like to take pictures, but I'm awful at getting them catalogued and the stories told. I'll get them cleaned up Real Soon Now, but at least I've been better about the more recent ones!