I am a web developer for the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Since February of 2004, I have been the lead programmer in Web Services for myUT.

Contact Information

My contact info

Some Personal Details

I played alto saxophone and baritone saxophone throughout junior and senior high school. My favorite saxophonists are Branford Marsalis, Gary Mulligan and Paul Desmond. I also composed a short piece for concert band, which was performed by my high school band a couple of years after I graduated. I wrote the piece in 1991 to commemorate the bicentennial anniversary of Mozart’s death in 1791 and the passing of Leonard Bernstein in October 1990. I juxtaposed the styles of the two great composers. For Bernstein, I chose to use modern jazz melodies, rhythms and instrumentation. And for Mozart, I choose to use the sonata form, which was a common musical form used by Mozart and his contemporaries in the Classical period. When I have some time, I’ll digitize the recording and put a link to it up here.

In August of 1992, my parents, older brother and I were living in Miami when Hurricane Andrew came through town. We had chosen to stay in our home and ride out the storm. Big mistake!!! We were in the house when a big boom sounding like a howitzer came from our living room. It turns out that part of the roof of our house was violently removed by the wind and the windows of our living room were actually blown out of place. We spent the remainder of that night huddled in a bathroom-the only room in our house with no windows in it. And despite the trio of hurricanes which criss-crossed Florida in 2004, my family refuses to leave South Florida. I am happy to report that this time around nothing remarkable happened.

Reading

  • Currently reading
    • The Inner Jefferson: Portrait of a Grieving Optimist by Andrew Burstein
  • Recently read
    • Jefferson and Monticello: The Biography of a Builder by Jack Mclaughlin
    • An Army at Dawn by Rick Atkinson
    • Carnage and Culture by Victor Davis Hanson
    • Ripples of Battle by Victor Davis Hanson
  • Also recommended
    • History of Britain (three volumes) by Simon Schama
    • Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces by Tom Clancy and Gen. Carl Stiner (ret.)
    • Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West by Stephen Ambrose
    • Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest by Stephen E. Ambrose
    • D Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II by Stephen E. Ambrose
    • Nothing Like It In The World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869 by Stephen E. Ambrose
    • The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day by Cornelius Ryan
    • Bridge Too Far: The Classic History of the Greatest Airborne Battle of World War II by Cornelius Ryan
    • Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis by William C. Davis
    • A History of the American Revolution by John R. Alden
    • Battles of the Revolutionary War, 1775-1781 by W. J. Wood
    • The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
    • Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis

Lately, most of my reading has consisted of non-fiction. I recently finished An Army at Dawn by Rick Atkinson, about the Allied campaign in North Africa, the infancy and growth of the U.S. Army in World War II, and the decline of the Axis powers in Europe. I enjoyed the book, as I was not familiar with the Allied campaign in North Africa. I am eagerly awaiting the next installment on the Allied campaign in Sicily and Italy. I also recently finished two books by Victor Davis Hanson, Carnage and Culture and Ripples of Battle. And before those, I read Simon Schama’s three-volume History of Britain. My father-in-law, who is a retired naval officer, managed to get me a copy of Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces by Tom Clancy and Gen. Carl Stiner (ret.), which Gen. Stiner was kind enough to autograph for me. I’ve also been known to enjoy books by Issac Asimov, Larry Niven and J.R.R. Tolkein.

My other interests include hiking, bicycling, photography and travel. On a recent trip to Las Vegas with my wife, I managed to combine a few of these and hiked a lot in Joshua Tree, Death Valley, Yosemite, Sequoia & King’s Canyon National Parks, and Mojave National Preserve, among other places.