Who am I?

Why do you care? Hell, if I were you, would I?

O.K., O.K. I give up.....

    I guess if you slugged through all of the vast and wonderful web to get to this place the least I could do is give you some sort of an answer to dampen your burning curiosity..... Plus, I had to author a personal "Homepage" for a class at CCSU and this is the product. No reason to not mix business with pleasure, right?

Physical Presentation:
Pt is a 33 Y/O white male, C/O owning a large, green, British motorcycle. Upon arrival, pt is A & O times 3, pupils PERL, skin warm & dry, lungs clear bilat & equal chest rise, abd soft & NT, and shows no visible signs of trauma. Denies drug abuse or excessive ETOH use, and states NKMA. The bike's condition is another matter.....

    A sudden flashback of my days (well, 4 or so years) of ambulance, paramedic, and fire fighting work.....

Even dug up an old picture for your amusement.

? Would you trust your life to this person ? :-)

    I am about 6' 5" tall and mass almost 285#, dirty blond hair, grayish blue eyes, blondish-red mustache (whoops.. it fell off some time before Christmas and I can't seem to find it now!), and unfortunately have to wear contacts or glasses.

    My ancestors came from parts of the Austro-German Alps on my dad's side and the Ukraine area of Russia on my mother's side. My nickname at work is "Bigfoot" and if I'm any close representation of my forefathers, I certainly would not want to meet any of them on a dark night, even armed with a stout battle ax or well honed long blade! But when you can't fit into a Corvette without the sunroof being open, you notice how 'short' the rest of the ?normal? world is.
 

The Rest of the Story:
    I live about 10 minutes from Hartford, Connecticut in the northeastern part of the United States. In an almost 100 year old dutch colonial house that unfortunately reminds me constantly of the movie "The Money Pit"! But with a lot of work and $$$ it is slowly (derisive laughter from my friends) becoming a nice place to live in. (Yah. I know. It's not a home it just a workshop for projects with things like a living room, dining room, etc. included.... ;-)   ) A reason to own a house? A place to keep more toys, yes, but the king sized bathtub is a plus.

Toys are fine but if you want to cook you need you need to have a nice herb garden as well. Only problem is that the cat has taken up to lounging in the parsley... darn critter.

Critter:

Anti-Vermin Weapon: The Whisp, the very rare Connecticut snow tiger.
 

Found as a little starving kitten at CCSU looking rather thin and sort of beat up and sorrowful, but he had a good attitude. The campus police wanted to take him to the ASPCA, but lucky for him, a friend intervened and I got to take him home - where he has grown up nicely. His job is to eat any moving or non-moving insect found in or around the house. Also, good for attacking shoe laces while you are tying them!

Short MPG of the Kitten Spazzin out one day....

Major Toys:

CNC Milling Machine  Takisawa TSL-800 Lathe
    Its not all that big of a house but at least there is room for my pride and joy Analam Crusader II CNC 3-axis Bridgeport vertical mill, and a Milwaukee surface grinder. I also own a nice Yuasa 14" X 40" geared head gap bed lathe that I temporarily keep at a friends place of business. That is until the basement dirt is dug down a foot or so and a concrete floor is poured.
 

    This little idea of purchasing a house has put another long term project of mine into a holding pattern. But how can you build an airplane in your basement when it still has a dirt floor?

You cant!

    I've had to temporally (I hope) stop construction of my Cozy Mk IV fiberglass composite airplane which is a four place canard pusher prop that will cruse at 200 MPH and have a useful load of around 1000 lbs. So currently it will stay in the "Gee, that looks like an canoe and not an airplane." stage of a nearly finished fuselage section. Eventually, I will fly this fast, beautiful airplane instead of the standard old Cessna 172 that I currently get to pilot. (Can't complain to much!)

My other hobbies include deep sea fishing, whitewater kayaking, downhill skiing (I'm pretty good too!), competitive shooting and archery, and my favorite hobby above all: cooking. I started cooking at a very young age and my mother taught me all of her tricks. So that is something I get to do every day and find it very relaxing, even if it is a bit of work!

Also, I try to play tennis once a week with another engineering friend (he works for Pratt doing tooling design). We have lots of enthusiasm and correspondingly lesser skill. Even one of the tennis team's women players kicked both of our asses together! But we have fun and get a good workout.

I decided to continue my other hobbies of metalwork and building things, so the answer is to get a job that involves both...

Jay - Ohh - Bee: (JOB - Salt Mine - etc. :)

   I went to school at Central Connecticut State University's Manufacturing Engineering degree program. Had a good time there! Got to work on two neat technology projects: an electric motorcycle to compete in the Tour de Sol, and a human powered helicopter. The Envirocycle can even get up to 65 MPH and our longest run between recharging was over 70 miles. We even took first place in the motorcycle division from the 2000 New York to Washington, DC. race! Though the handling of the bike can be termed, um interesting, due to its almost 1000 pound weight... YOW

    I worked at Caval Tool in Newington, CT. and making parts for G.E., Pratt & Whitney, and Rolls - Royce. The greatest part of my job was the inspection and balancing of new manufacture, OEM, large rotating turbine engine components for aircraft. Also responsible for assisting in documenting, submitting, and organizing of non-conforming material parts and reports.

    Basically, anything that varies from the narrow blueprint tolerances is non-conforming. And the Big Boys will still purchase it for use in the engines, if it can be documented and approved by their engineers as not anything that will be harmful in operation, hopefully.

So if you fly you can't escape!

01/01 Update:
  Finally had some time to do some maintenance on the webpage. I have put off challenging the current Paramedic National Registry exam for a little while...

    I am getting ready to finish up on my winter-session courses and start my final semester at CCSU! Thank God! Getting some information for my senior project together ("Hard Shelling" Alternative Manufacturing Techniques for Moldless Composite Structures) and noticed how long it has been since I posted an update. :-0        (Update - > It was over 30 Pages LONG!!!! ARGHHH!)

03/03 Update:
Finally decided to do a bit of the ol' update on the webpage. Life has continued to be interesting and challenging! Lets see where I left off.... ok, I see...

Decided that while finishing up school I needed some money and some experience in the engineering field. So I took a Co-Op position in Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford with the Strategic Manufacturing Processes group (read - > manufacturing research). I

was allowed to cram as much information into my head on advanced machining techniques and processes that I could absorb throughout my year with the group. I got to work with the most incredible machines (toys!!!), processes, and people (Thanks to all from SMP) all while caring out cutting edge research. But all good things must come to an end... Pratt like most larger aerospace companies was hit hard by 9/11 and this caused a large cut in the groups budget. R&D is a shaky place to be in a poor economy.

So it was time to move, but the nice thing is that Pratt is a LARGE company. And the military side of the company was looking for additional people. So I accepted a position in the F119's Vectoring Nozzle group as a Project Engineer with a focus upon cost reductions through improved manufacturing processes. Lots of work to be done now! I work with adaptive machining, high pressure coolants, advanced cutter design and use, high temp coatings/maskents, and logical manufacturing setup's - or in a nutshell - HPM or High Performance Machining.

Bike is still there! Under a whole bunch of snow since it has been a GREAT ski year.  Hopefully I can get out soon and enjoy the roads again!

How'd I get there?
I went to UCONN for a year and a half and decided that I hated it!

Decided to become a Firefighter/Paramedic. That makes sense, doesn't it?

Got an Associates in EMS Management, a Connecticut paramedic license, and a nationally certified firefighter 1 certification and went to work....

Did that for four years and decided that a change was in order, so decided to join some of my friends from school and became General Manager of a medium sized computer store located in West Hartford, Connecticut. Enjoyed that, but decided that we could either be friends or business partners, not both! Lesson to be learned here.

So we are still friends and go riding together. This job also taught me all the aspects of P.C.'s, networks, hardware, and software. And has given me the firm belief that computers hate all human beings!  ;-)

A few quotes for the day:

"Travel broadens the mind." Doctor Who - BBC TV

"Being born with a silver spoon in one's mouth can sometimes lead to a case of heavy metal toxicity." - Anon