More About Me

Merriam-Webster.com defines common sense as “sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts”, so I will attempt to instill a little of what I perceive as common sense into important subjects of today. If you noticed in my byline my initials are A.S.S. so now you can understand where the term ass-sense came from.

So why should my version be helpful to you? To help you understand that let me tell you a little bit about myself. Both of my parents grew up on farms in a little town in Minnesota. My father enlisted in and spent 20 years in the Navy. I was born in Puerto Rico and by the time I reached high school I had lived in 9 states and visited all of the other states except for 2, North Dakota and Alaska (I have since visited North Dakota but have yet to see the great state of Alaska). While in high school I spent a summer living in Mexico as a foreign exchange student.

I went to college at the University of Michigan to become a nuclear engineer but left there in my junior year to try to play professional baseball in Florida. That didn’t work out but I did meet my lovely wife and two children while I was there. We moved to Indiana, where my wife was from, in 1981, and I spent three years as a prison guard in a maximum-security prison. I also returned to college and enrolled in the Kelly School of Business at Indiana University. I left the prison because after three years there no one there had ever received a raise. 

We then moved to Ohio where we worked in restaurants before I enlisted in the Air Force. I spent 5 years in the Air Force in Texas, South Carolina, and, for a short period, in Germany. After the Air Force my wife and I returned to Indiana where I got into computer technology as a network engineering consultant. I have been doing that since 1991. During that time, we obtained custody of our twin granddaughters (our son’s only children) who were two at the time. Less than two years later my wife passed away from cancer and I raised the twins by myself from then on. Now one of them has two children and the other has three with another one on the way. 

I went back to college when I was 56 years old and obtained a degree in Network Engineering from Purdue University. While in college this time I had an opportunity to visit some technology companies in India to see how they operate. I was also able to visit one of my granddaughters in South Korea because her husband was stationed with the Army there. 

When I was in elementary school, I heard a quote from Albert Einstein, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” I bastardized that somewhat for myself and came up with “Everything should be made as simple as possible, and everything can be.” I have lived by that for my entire life. My wife once said of me “Ask him what time it is and he will teach you how to build the clock.” Because of this I have also always been the one people go to when they need things explained. 

All of this has been to show you that I have a wide range of experiences and knowledge that is unique and it gives me a unique perspective to many things. I also believe that I will be able to explain things in simple terms that most people will be able to understand and that I will be able to comment about subjects that people are interested in understanding.