I was born in 1955 and raised in Western
Pennsylvania, where I was fortunate to live on the edge of a
heavily wooded forest. I grew up with two sisters and three brothers,
running the deer trails, hunting crawdads in the streams and
building forts and tree houses in the local woods.
I also grew up around computers
and the graphic arts. My father worked for IBM, and my mother
was an art teacher. You might say that I have followed in both
my parents footsteps with parallel careers in both computers
and the graphic arts.
After graduating High School
I attended Art School in Northern Colorado, majoring in fine
art printmaking, with a minor in Graphic Design. As part of the
work study program I apprenticed with the university sign painter.
He was a former Times Square billboard painter soon to retire.
He taught me the art of fine hand lettering and sign making.
Following graduation, I took
my sign brushes on the road: painting billboards, lettering windows,
trucks and boats throughout the Western U.S for three years.
When I finally made it to the Pacific NW, I knew that I had found
my home.
Settling in the Seattle area,
I worked for several commercial sign and display companies, and
finally found my niche at a progressive sign and display company
called TradeMarx. It was here that I was introduced to computer
assisted design, and got to work with a number of up-and-coming
tech companies such as: Microsoft, Aldus, Adobe and Boeing.
When the first Macintosh computers
appeared in the late 1980's, I was eager to get my hands on one.
I paid over $2,000 for a Mac SE and totally immersed myself in
mastering this new and exciting medium. From the very beginning
I was captivated with this new creative medium.
Within a few years I had learned
enough to retire from the sign and display industry, and devote
myself entirely to desktop publishing. During this period I also
began maintaining and repairing Macs for myself and other designers,
discoving to my surprise that I was a true computer geek. I was
soon repairing Macs, maintaining a bank of rental Macs, and tutoring
Mac customers in their use - something that I continue to do
to the present day.
In 1991 I left Seattle and
moved to the San Juan Islands. In 1992 I founded the San Juan
Islands Mac-Maniacs, an Apple User Group, which I ran until 1997.
We published a monthly newsletter and held monthly meetings with
up to forty members.
As Apple Ambassador in the
San Juan Islands, I became a community liaison and a "Johnny
Appleseed." I was dedicated to spreading Apple computers
throughout the community, and many of those early Apple seeds
flourished in the local business and the educational communities.
This is one of the reasons that there are so many Macintosh users
in the San Juan Islands.
In 1998 I qualified for the
Apple Learn and Earn program, an online Apple school. In August,
I completed first the silver and then the gold course requirements
and received my Apple certifications.
I love living here in the San
Juan Islands, and working within a vibrant Macintosh community.
There is a abundance of interesting jobs, special projects and
fascinating clientele here. Now that wireless broadband has arrived,
it is inevitable that the islands will continue to become a magnet
for emerging high tech and creative enterprises.
