I was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma at high noon on August 10, 1953. My family moved to Oklahoma City when I was three, and in 1966 we moved to Norman, Oklahoma where I still live. I graduated from Norman High School in 1971 and attended the University of Oklahoma. I've been employed at Shaklee USA's nutritional supplements plant since 1980. I started in the Tablet Packaging department where I operated and maintained some of the packaging machinery, as well as serving as material handler for a few years. After a few years of occasionally being recruited to assist with installing, configuring, and troubleshooting software on the plant's PCs, I was hired by the IT department in 1997. As you can tell, I'm interested in music and computers. Other hobbies include sailing, volleyball, bicycling, and trying to play the guitar.

    Starting in January '97 I'll be leaving production temporarily to be involved in a special project that mainly involves validating the new version of our inventory and accounting database software (BPCS). I may also get to spend some time working with our new NT server as well as setting up and testing some new hardware. This assignment should last a year or more, so I'm really looking forward to working with the Information Technologies department for an extended period of time.

     Free at last! All my working life I've labored in a production environment, but as of today April 23, 1997 there will be no more uniforms or 5am alarms! No more hairnets, earplugs, or steel-toed boots! No more greasy, grimy chains and cogs! I have been hired-on permanently in the Information Technologies department, with the title of Systems Support Technician. It was seven years ago when I started messing around with computers because I didn't want to get left behind in the "technological revolution". Now it looks like hacking away in DOS, dialing up bulletin boards, and writing giant batch files turned out to be more that just a passtime. It feels great to look forward to going to work for a change.

        I'm starting 1998 with a new position! I've been promoted to the position of Programmer/Analyst. This is a new position at the Norman plant, and I'll be primarily responsible for supporting our new Electronic Document Management System, as well as the Lab Information Management System software. These are both based on Oracle databases, so I'll be learning a lot about Oracle and SQL in the coming months. I'll be working with users both in Norman, and at the Hayward facility. Other tasks will include developing a front-end for our implementation of SMS and writing login scripts to keep our users updated with the proper software. If this year proves to be anything like last year it should be very challenging, and busy!