I am currently in my third career as graphic/Web designer and avid photographer. In my second incarnation, I was co-owner of the Agate Cove Inn B&B in Mendocino. During this time, I first published my guidebook to the area, Mendocino Outdoors—now in its Third Edition.
Before we moved to Mendocino to buy the B&B, I was a computer scientist and researcher at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, CA. “Once a geek, always a geek!” I wrote my first program in 1974, and I’ve programmed in Fortran, Assembler, Basic, COBOL, Pascal, Snobol, LISP (multiple dialects), C++, Java, PHP, and Javascript. There might be another couple in that list I’ve forgotten….
During my time as an innkeeper, I served as president of both the Mendocino Business Association and the Mendocino County Lodging Association, and I am a past board member of the Mendocino County Promotional Alliance and the Kelley House Museum in Mendocino. And no, there aren’t any standing stones in Mendocino—the picture is from Callanish in the Outer Hebrides.
If you want to see the gory details, check out my resume. You can also see my public profile on LinkedIn.
I also hold a brown belt in Shotokan Karate, earned under Sensei Irv Ploke in Cupertino, CA. I don’t practice much any more, since there are few opportunities to work with other people up here in the hinterlands.
I am also a singer—a second tenor, to be precise. I sing in several groups:
- The Acafellas, a male octet. We have been singing together about 7 years now. We were contestants in the 2010 Bay Area Harmony Festival in San Francisco in March 2010. We also sang in the Village Chamber Series during the Mendocino Music Festival in July 2010. After 7 years, I left the group in February 2011 to focus on the new chorale that I’m forming with Paul Friesen (see below).
- Eclectica: a mixed quartet that sings a wide range of complex and wonderful music. We sing a lot of sacred music, so we are popular with some of the local churches. We are performing in the Village Music Series for the Mendocino Music Festival this year. Our concert is on Wed, July 13, 2011 at Evergreen Methodist Church in Fort Bragg.
- College of the Redwoods Choir: I sing with the community chorus as my schedule permits. The chorus will be singing in the closing night of the 2011 Music Festival: Mozart’s Grand Mass in C Minor.
- Along with Paul Friesen, I formed a new chorale of 12 members in the Spring of 2011. We’ve chosen the initial members of the group, and we are working on our first set of songs. It’s very exciting because we are starting to develop a group sound!
