Alan currently works as an engineer at Hill Air Force Base. He enjoys reading and has an ever-increasing collection of books. As his collection expands, we have to occasionally acquire a new bookshelf to hold it all. Alan loves computers and is very good at working with them. He has taught himself several programming languages, and is currently in the process of writing his own language. His big goals include writing his own operating system and network protocol. (He also has a daydream of building his own space station...and terra-forming Venus.)
Alan has an artistic side which expresses itself in writing short stories and poetry, in photography, and most especially in drawing and painting. In the past couple of years, Alan has taken up painting in a big way, which is something he hasn’t done since high school. He has been experimenting with acrylics, and appreciates the flexibility that medium gives him. This past autumn, Alan bought himself a guitar, and has been careful to practice playing it everyday.
Although neither of us is particularly athletic, Alan enjoys being outdoors.
Besides hiking, he also likes to fly kites, and recently learned to use a stunt kite. One of his best kites got away. The last we saw of it, it was soaring over the mountains, well out of reach.
25 random facts about Alan
1. While growing up I had many opportunities to help my dad put one of the family cars back together. However, I never got very good at it, and now I prefer to pay someone else to do it.
2. Reading is my favorite pastime.
3. As a teenager I once got sent to the doctor, because I loved reading more than sleeping and sleep deprivation was affecting my schoolwork.
4. I got my first pair of glasses in the fourth grade. My mom discovered the need when she tried to point out a pheasant in our back yard, and I couldn't see it.
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| Alan, age 10 |
5. I love video games, and am glad my wife does too.
6. I want to be an author; the biggest obstacle is all the writing I have to do for work.
7. I love to paint. Acrylics are my medium of choice at the moment, although I also like ink and illustrator dye (which is a bit like watercolor).
8. I am a 10k amateur Go player (on www.gokgs.com).
9. One of my hobbies is inventing my own computer programming language.
10. I like to fly stunt kites, although I'm very much a beginner.
11. I have traveled to Italy, Germany, and Australia. Somehow I never made it to Mexico or Canada, even though I've lived in Alaska and Texas.
12. I worked in a fish cannery in Alaska as a summer job my last two years of high-school.
13. The first thing I bought with my Alaska loot was a computer (it had a 40 MByte hard drive!).
14. I love sushi!
15. I became an electrical engineer out of the mistaken idea that I'd get to do something in computer graphics. While I've never been able to take my career in that direction, it has still been fun.
16. I have written software for robots and fighter planes. (See! Told you it's been fun.)
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| Alan with ODIS in 2004 |
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| Microsoft's cafeteria |
18. I didn't buy my first car until I was 22.
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| Alan's first car |
19. My least favorite food is canned peas.
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| Alan, age 14 |
22. The only "F" I ever got in school was in a 6th grade communications class. They required us to give a presentation to the class. I was terrified and flatly refused.
23. I passed out once giving a talk in church.
24. I'm now a confident public speaker (if I'm prepared) and don't mind speaking without notes.
25. The only broken bone I've ever had was a collar bone, at the age of 8. I was climbing a sumac tree, pretending to be a firefighter rescuing a squirrel from a forest fire, and the branch broke. (I got a concussion too, and couldn't remember my 2nd grade teacher's name or how to count to 10. I had just seen a Hart to Hart episode with a murder in a hospital, so I wouldn't let them keep me there overnight for observation.)
