After a tour in the U.S. Navy as a Machinist Mate, I went to school and graduated from Long Beach City College in California with an Associate Degree, major Electronics, and minor in English. During my college years, I worked at several radio communication shops in the Los Angeles area, and eventually became a mobile telephone service manager. I've installed communications and security equipment for personalities as Marlon Brando, Stevie Wonder, and others. I've found that most of the personalities that I've met are just normal people living in extrordinary circumstances.

    Upon graduating, I went to work for Collins-Rockwell in Newport Beach, CA, as an electronic technician. My division produced communication systems for the U.S. military. Later I transferred to Rockwell Semiconductors, who were currently producing IC chips for the Atari 2600 game console. Needless to say I became very 'well informed' in Atari games! I became the 'unofficial' beta tester for new releases. Basically that means management asked me to do it, but I did not get any additional money for it. I was thrilled anyway!

    When the game console sales took a plunge in the late 1980's, Rockwell Semiconductors expanded their factory production into computer systems, specifically networking and modem hardware, as well as specialty hardware for the military. One of the more interesting positions I held was Emergency Response Team Manager, involving dealing with crisis issues to protect the safety of personnel and equipment. This entailed working with some of the most deadly gas and chemical products on the planet. There wasn't a HazMat team anywhere that knew more about it than us! I also worked a total of 17 years for them, at all positions of Technician , Supervisor, and finally as an Equipment Support Engineer.

    In 1997 I relocated from Los Angeles, CA, to Louisville, KY. I entered the IT Technology field working for GE Capital Information Systems where I installed, serviced, and updated hundreds of PCs, Servers, and Printers all across the USA. That was pretty cool flying to some distant city every week for two years! I collected a lot of refrigerator magnets from all the cities that I visited. After the GE contracts were completed, I worked for TEK Systems servicing computer hardware in three local states. Not as much fun as getting on a plane every week, but still something new to fix with every call. After that I decided something more permanent and local was needed, so I went to work for Strategic Technology Solutions (who later changed their name to ESI Technology Advisors) located in Louisville, KY (Why is it everyone I work for has an exremely long name?). Here I found the perfect combination of people, talent, resources, and team spirit to make work a passion instead of just a job.

    All those years I was also at home drawing graphics, and creating animations on the computers of the time. I went on to freelance as a computer graphic artist for awhile, and did many graphic designs including logos, web pages, and game GUI artwork for various companies. I also donate my webmaster services to a local church, free of charge.

    My hobbies include building computer systems, playing in my Roland MIDI Recording Studio, browsing the web, and communications. My licenses include a FCC General Class Radiotelephone, and an Extra Class Amateur Radio . My callsign is KD6MHH.

    Of course, my purpose in life is to meet people wherever I go. My motto is, "Life is about the people you meet along the way". I also maintain the Frontier First Encounters Art Page!
 

    A friend of mine and I used to play the Commodore 64 Elite in 1985 as a multi-player version! This was long before people knew about the Internet, and calling some remote BBS was the norm. We bought two games, had two computers, two telephones, and one conversation. Each of us would play the game independently, and converse about what just occured over the telephone. We were so in synch, that we could patrol the same system space together! I could almost see my friend's ship in my left viewscreen!

    As both of us were technicians, we went deeply into the coding, and learned all the tricks and features of the games. Our different viewpoints also added to the knowledge base. Simple things like I prefer the 'standard' joystick, and he prefers the 'fighter' type, made a big difference in our approach.

    From these beginnings started the affection I have had for the Elite games over the years. Once the game was played, I still wanted more. I started hacking a few ships, and off I went on a grand tour of the universe in Frontier Elite II . It was like getting a brand new game to play all over again! I continued these detailed investigations with the Frontier First Encounters version. Thus I have amassed years of work and enjoyment from the Elite games.

    It just gets better! Along comes Compuserve, and the first attempt of what is now known as a newsgroup, for the Elite games. Then came the Internet, and a little newsgroup called alt.fan.elite . I now converse with players from all over the world, who are just as involved with the Elite games as I. Many players were also looking for additional information on the games. That started my postings to Elite sites on the web. I have done graphics and hacks for Babak's FFE Page, graphics and info files for Jades FFE Site, and designed a graphic interface for The Elite Ring . I worked closely with Steve Critchlow, an excellent programmer, in discovering all the secrets in most of the Elite games.

    Finally the day came, when I took the plunge, and posted my own Frontier First Encounters Art Page. Being a graphic artist, I wanted to enhance the playing of the game by creating never before seen artwork in the games. I wanted a theme which would be different from the current Elite pages on the web. In that way my page would ENHANCE, not REPLACE, the information already available on the net. Since my humble beginnings, the page has greatly expanded, with more goodies for ALL the game versions added every month. After 20 years, there seems to be no end to the mystique of the Elite games!

    The Frontier First Encounters Art Page is my pride and joy. It was created out of love for the games, and not for fame, fortune, or any other trappings of our society. It is also my personal salute to Ian Bell and David Braben, the authors of Elite, and again to David, who went on to create the sequels. Legalities and industry problems not withstanding, they are two extrordinary individuals who once had a vision of what a great game should be. They should be very proud of what they have accomplished. Finally, I dedicated the site to my wife and son, who died in a horrible tradegy in 1997. By doing my best for the site, I think they would be proud of my work. With that kind of motivation, there is no limit to just how good the Frontier First Encounters Art Page will become...
 

    When I'm not working, I'm in the studio playing the keyboards. Maybe I'll eventually get a CD compiled of all my tunes that I play. I hope to someday leave these fancy computer jobs, and play piano bar jazz for peanuts in a smoke filled bar. These days its hard to actually find a smoked filled bar!

    On the last weekend in June, you can hear me sending morse code at 35 wpm for a local amateur radio club. It's part of ARRL Annual Field Day celebration, where world-wide emergency communications are tested. For 24 hours we make as many contacts as are possible across the United States and Canada.

    As for Elite, I co-authored Pocket PC Elite with John Welch, an excellent C+ programmer in the U.K. With the advent of 400Mhz RISC processors for PDAs, the introduction of the Compaq Ipaq PDA realised the possibility of porting the game of Elite to a handheld device. Thus Jon and I created the "definitive" version of Elite on the PDA. There is not a better version of the game, as it is even better than the original. You can see our results at Pocket PC Elite.

    Unfortunately we cound not get all the copyright holders to agree to a release of this great game for the Windows CE PDAs. Darn those British guys! They could be making millions if they weren't so picky about who gets what! It is a real shame as this professional version finally brought Elite into the 21st century!

My Toy List:  A REAL Cobra Mark III . I like to TRAVEL! I'll settle for a publicly released PDA version of Elite!

Best Wishes:  To Jeannie. The best person I ever met on this planet, and who is always about what is right and good in this world. She will live in my heart always.