N5BIA 

I am retired, as of January 2011. I worked for over 16 years in the pipleine inspection industry. I left the pipeline inspection company and found a job with a company that designed and built ground penetrating radar for pavement inspection. When that company was taken over by a foreign company, I left to work for another 12 years as a technical writer, web site developer, and project manager. I am a private pilot, amateur radio operator, and amateur photographer. I have recently revived an interest in firearms and sport shooting. I plan to pursue these activities as much as health and finances permit. I may still take some small contract jobs if they are interesting enough.

Darlene loves to take care of our grandson, watch wildlife, collect pictures, collect dolls, and fix up the house. She retired after a long career as a data analyst for a pipeline inspection company. Lately, she has been spending a lot of time with our 2 year old grandson.

We both like to travel, particularly in the US. We have visited Arizona, Connecticut, Massachusetts, California, Tennessee, Georgia, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Washington state, Oregon, Alaska, Puerto Rico and the Carribean.

Though we are empty nesters, we share our residence with Shadow, our Cocker Spaniel. He is a rescue pup who came to live with us in 2013 after Rufus, our faithful friend for over 13 years passed on. We have had Cockers almost our whole married life. The first ones were pets for the kids growing up, but we have always had a special connection with Cockers.

What's happening here

This is a playground to let me try out ideas and techniques for website development. This particular instance is based on examples developed by Eric A. Meyer. He works with css style sheets (an understatement!) and I'm trying to learn from the master. His original work on this design is in his complex spiral demo. I adopted some of his techniques directly, and adapted some others to meet some goals I established when starting this project.

This site is also a place to store and share information about our interests. As time permits, each of the pages in the menu to the left will be updated to reflect the latest experiments and expanded as new information becomes available.

For the record, this site best viewed with Firefox. It also works correctly with Epiphany. I'm not too sure obout IE, though. I do know that there are issues with IE6, but that is easy to fix!

News

January 2020

We have been very busy since the last update. We have made a couple of extended trips out west to visit friends in Arizona, as well as trips to the Grand Canyon, Utah, Glacier National Park, and Colorado. We have also been to Chicago for a family event which included a road trip through Arkansas, Tennessee, and Indiana. We have also been working through some health issues, but that is to be expected as one ages :-( I think we're back on track, but the Good Lord is in control.

April 2014

I haven't been keeping this page updated much lately, but since I have the domain name, guess I should keep it alive. I manage two domains for my ham radio club - w5nc.net, and txqp.net. Feel free to drop by to see what is happening there. I also have a website for my hobby 'business' in ham radio apparatus, though that has taken a back seat since retirement. Too many trips and too many other activities. Photography has taken a bit of time, between trips and posting pictures on n5bia.net, my photography site.

August 2011

We've made a couple of nice trips so far this year - one to the Texas coast and one to the west coast (San Diego). We may go to a couple of hamfests around the state this year, but the next big trip won't be until next year.

December 2010

We've decided that the time has come for us to spend our time traveling and enjoying friends and family. We are officially retired, as of January 1, 2011. We may take some contract or consulting assignments, as long as they don't interfere with retirement too much.

December 2006

My hobby kit website, n5bia.com, is up and running. Still a few touchup items and some sections need more information added in the future. But at least it is available to help project builders. I'm also trying out some new web development tools.

To Do

I'm starting this list to keep track of ideas and tasks.