This is where I live! This is Saint Marie, Montana. You are looking east towards Saint Marie from Highway 24.
Can't find Saint Marie on your road atlas? Take a look at the map below. Find Glasgow, go east on Highway 2 for 2 miles until it crosses Highway 24. Turn north (left) on Highway 24 and go about 15 miles. What you see in the background is what you'll see just short of mile marker 17... Saint Marie, Montana!
For those of you that have made it this far, and have a little more time, why not take a look at my music collection or my movie collection?
I'm including a little background of myself here.
First of all I was raised in a small town in New Jersey, by the name of Atlantic Highlands. It was there that I went to grammar school, and it was also there that I spent the first 17 years of my life.
High School was attended at Red Bank Catholic High School.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 | |||
 |
 |
 |
 |
After ending my Air Force tour of duty in 1966, I went to work in electronics for Bell Labs, Delta Data Systems, Honeywell EDP, MAI Electronics and Westinghouse Electronics.
Looking for something else to do, and wanting to travel, I received my degree as a Registered Nurse. I became what was called a "Flying Nurse", "Traveling Nurse", or "Contract Nurse" (my family simply called me "The Gypsy"!). I would cover hospitals throughout the United States on three-month contracts. I have worked as an R.N. in
Arizona,
Connecticut,
Florida,
Louisiana,
Mississippi,
Montana,
New Jersey,
North Carolina,
Oregon,
Pennsylvania, and
Texas. The cities have
been many, and the hospitals ranged from 10 beds to over 2,000 beds. My
specialty was Intensive Care, Coronary Care, Emergency Room and Administrative.
As for Montana...it was nursing that first brought me here. First to
Billings, then Fort Belknap, Glasgow, Poplar,
Havre and back to Glasgow several times.
In 1976 I purchased my first computer. A Radio Shack Model I. Followed shortly by a Color Computer, then a couple of Radio Shack Model III's. I put two BBS's on-line. The Homeport and the Corsair.
In 1986 I purchased my first "IBM" computer. It was a 286-10...top of the line in those days, and I got my hands on a BBS software program called GT-Power. This began a long and enjoyable relationship with other SYSOPs throughout the
GT-Net.
Shortly thereafter I purchased a 386-33 system. And with two computers on-line, 24 hours per day and 7 days per week, I really began to get into BBSing.
It wasn't long after that I bought a 486-50, and yes, I tried to run three BBS's, but it was just too expensive, and the Internet was starting to become "the only way to telecommunicate" (although I still prefer the local BBS aspect).
And just today (June 28, 2005) I finished upgrading my system!
Well, not really an "upgrade". About a month ago I decided that I would like to have a computer downstairs as well as upstairs. So I bought a couple of Linksys wireless adapters and went at it.
It turned-out to be one of the worst decisions of my life (other than my two marriages).
Even with a full-blown Norton's running, and utilizing 128-bit encryption, someone was managing to leech my wireless network. I didn't mind that too much, but when all of a sudden all kinds of virii, worms, trojans and other assorted goodies started showing-up on both systems, requiring a couple of full FDISK and FORMATTING sessions (along with the days of re-installing all my software), I decided this was a very bad idea!
So now the "downstairs" computer is once again upstairs. Safely tucked away in the computer room closet.
Until I move to a place where I can get either cable or DSL, and am able to hardwire the systems together, I have no further interest in networking!
My current system consists of:
CPU:
MEMORY:
MOTHERBOARD:
HARDDRIVES:
CD BURNERS:
DVD BURNER:
FLOPPY DRIVES:
TAPE BACKUPS:
VIDEO CARD:
MONITOR:
NETWORK:
WEBCAM:
BARCODE READER:
MODEMS:
MOUSE:
SOUND CARD:
SPEAKERS:
SCANNER:
PRINTER:
MICROPHONE:
HEADPHONES:
OTHER STUFF:
TWO-WAY SATELLITE SERVICE
I know you have seen the commercials on television by both Earthlink and Direcway advertising "high-speed, broadband Internet service, at speeds more than 70-times faster than dial-up."
Don't you believe a stinking word of it!
Two-way satellite service sucks little dead donkey dicks!
First of all, they never mention their "Fair Access Policy". FAP, for short.
Sure, you can get download speeds of up to 1.5 Mb/s. But, don't even think about using it! If you do, and you download more than around 168 meg in 4 hours, they enable their FAP policy. All of a sudden you will find that your download speeds have dropped to around what you would get over a lousy 33.6K dial-up connect. AND IT STAYS THERE FOR UP TO 16 HOURS!
As for upload speeds? You have to be kidding!
I used to get faster uploads with a 28.8K dial-up account!
Then there is the weather problem. If it is cloudy, if it is raining, if it is snowing, or if it is just foggy, forget it. The signal doesn't make the trip to the satellite and back to the ground.
On a good day be prepared for really miserable long PING times (2 seconds or longer). So if you want to play on-line games ... forget it!
On bad days be prepared to pack a lunch if you are going to do any browsing!
Hughes/Direcway/Earthlink has NO customer service! No technical service! And the cretins who answer their phones have no idea of how to help you if you encounter a technical problem.
Once you pay for the hardware, and you pay your $70 a month access fee, you are basically on your own!!
I have no idea where Direcway/Earthlink came up with the 70-times faster than dial-up! I really don't!
Unless they are comparing it to an old 2400 Baud modem (and that is on the download speed, until you get FAP'd). On the upload side, 70-times slower would have to be comparing it to a 110 Baud acoustic coupler!!
So, you are asking yourself, "Why does he stay with the satellite system?"
Well, it is very simple. The only other choice I have for an ISP is nemontel.net. And, when I was unlucky enough to have them as my provider they were off-line around 45% of the time. Their technical support team's claim to fame is that they can make Italian sauce!
I found their 56k dial-up functioned (when it was functioning) at around 28.8k speeds.
HOWEVER, nemontel.net did start offering ADSL awhile back. They advertised 738K down and 368K up. I signed-up for the service!
When the "installer" came to set-up the system I was amazed that he openly admitted that he knows nothing at all about computers. He was a telephone installer!
Well, I know a little about computers, and I had the ADSL up and running in no time.
Then I looked at the speeds...
Download speed was 400K and upload was 200K ... and here's the kicker ... that was in BITS not BYTES! How does that convert? Oh, it comes out to be around 40K-BYTES down and 20K-BYTES up!
I called nemont's office and told them to forget it. After two marriages, and an equal number of divorces, along with several heart attacks, I decided I had enough of the "Big City Life"!
And that is how I ended-up here ... living a very quiet and private ... if not sessile ... existence.
Prior to my heart attacks, when I was young and healthy, I had other interests other than firearms and hunting, 4x4ing, photography, computers, audio and video.
For the 7 or so years I was living in Florida I became a very active S.C.U.B.A. diver. I am a registered P.A.D.I. open water, night and wreck diver.
When I moved to Montana permanently I decided that it was too much trouble to drive all over the place, so I could be seen in the "Big Sky" over Montana, tooling around in a Cessna 172.
Some short-lived interests have been coin collecting, leather work, gardening, and model airplane building (both plastic display models and control-line flying models.)
A few of my hunting buddies have tried to get me interested in fishing ... but that is a hopeless cause! I find it totally boring.
This is my first attempt at a Homepage, so I hope that everything has worked as planned, and I'm sure that as time goes by, things will get neater and prettier.
And, things must be working out okay with my website ... since I am averaging over 3,300 users per day.
Pentium 4 2.53gHz with 533 mHz front side buss
768 meg of Corsair XMS PC-3200 CAS-2 DDR-SDRAM
Soyo Dragon Ultra Platinum
WDC WD12 00JB (119.96 GB, 7200 RPM, 8 megabyte buffer, UDMA 100)
HDS72258 0VLAT20 (82.30 GB, 7200 RPM, 2 megabyte buffer, UDMA 100)
IBM-DPTA -372730 (27.34 GB, 7200 RPM, 2 megabyte buffer, UDMA 66)
Two (2) LiteOn 52x32x52 CD-RW's
Yahama 40x16x10 CD-RW
Samsung TS-H552B CD/DVD +/-RW Writing Double Layer
(CD 40X, DVD 16X)
TEAC 1.4 megabyte 3.5 inch
TEAC 1.2 megabyte 5.25 inch
Hewlett Packard-Colorado 8 Gigabyte (External)
Colorado QIC-80 (2) (Internal)
ATI Radeon 9700 All-In-Wonder PRO with 256 meg of RAM, AGP X8
ViewSonic 17-inch E70F-5
LinkSys WUSB11 Wireless (retired)
Intel PRO-4 USB
CRQ Cat
Earthlink 2-Way Satellite System
Diamond SuperMax 56K USB (V92)
USR V.Everything "Corporate" 56K Serial (V90)
Logitech MX-310 Optical USB
Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live!
Cambridge Soundworks FPS-1800 surround sound speaker system
Flatbed: Microtek ScanMaker X6EL
Negative/Slide: Minolta Dimage Scan Elite
Hewlett Packard DeskJet 855Cxi
Audio-Technica AT4051a
Sony MDR-305
Dazzle SC Memory Module Reader
ZIO xD Memory Module Reader
Several people have asked why I don't have any pictures of me on my pages ... well ... the answer is very simple ... I don't have any recent ones that are worth posting. But in order to satisfy the curious, I have scanned some old Polaroids which were taken by an 83-year-old lady who happens to be the wife of one of my hunting buddies.
