  Having spent more than twenty years in service, product development, marketing and sales of pathology laboratory equipment and various other bio-medical instrumentation and software, and traveled extensively throughout the U.S., Canada, and the U. K. to a lesser extent, I'm currently enjoying Amateur Radio from a 2500-ft (762m) hilltop near peaceful Helvetia, West Virginia. |
Helvetia, West Virginia
Helvetia [
 Page TopW8AOK Station Overview
Located on a 3/4-mile long "hilltop" in
the center of a 200-acre tract, my HF station includes
an Icom IC-718 with
an MFJ-949E Versa
Tuner II feeding a 160-meter Inverted-V dipole suspended from
a 65-ft "Walnut
Tower". Personal [home] Computing History1982 - 1984: Commodore Vic-20 and C-64 with many peripherals; "Online" from home in 1983 via Compuserve and many BBSs; RTTY & CW via computer control [C-64] in 1984 (Yes!); and, one of the first "laptops", the M102; no one buys software, you write it and share it - no questions asked; etc. 1984 - 1993: Apple Macintosh 512K upgraded to a Macintosh PLUS with 4-meg RAM & 20-Mb external SCSI HD (various hardware accessories and software development systems including MacForth™); On the "internet" in pre-Browser days; pre-HTML v1.0 web page development; Cross-platform telecommunications development - just for the sport of it; etc. [ View Apple Computer's 1984 Super Bowl TV advertisement announcing the launch of the Macintosh here. ] 1994 - 1999: Apple Power Macintosh 6100/66 and various Intel 386 & 486 machines; extensive collection of development and SOHO software; etc. 2000 - present: Homebrew "box" with an AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2900+ 2.08 GHz CPU resident on a Chaintech CT-7NJL6 Motherboard populated with 2-GB of RAM [ 2 X 1024 MB (DDR SDRAM) in Dual Channel Configuration ] and running the Windows XP Pro/SP2 Operating System. Internal peripherals include an HP LightScribe DVD-RAM Optical Drive; TDK CD-ROM/RW Optical Drive; and, two hard drives: 150-GB & 115-GB.
Page TopBrief Professional BioAlma Maters: WVU (1970 - '74); NOLS (1978); and, WVUIT (1980 - '82) . 1975 - 1980: News photographer, copy writer, and editor-in-chief of The Webster Echo and [managing editor] The Webster Republican newspapers in Webster Springs, West Virginia. 1982 - 1994: North America service operations manager for Shandon, Inc. in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania [ Shandon was later acquired by Thermo Electron Corporation { c1997 } ]. While serving as the service operations manager for the North American market of the world's largest manufacturer and supplier of in vitro diagnostic pathology laboratory instrumentation, activities also included that of a working field engineer, research and development, and marketing product line management. 1994 - 1996: Marketing research and business development primarily with image and flow cytometry software and hardware systems while working with several biomedical science start-up ventures in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area. 1997: Physical training for, and a return to, the Southern Wind River Range in Wyoming for three months of high-country backpacking and camping above 10,000-ft in "thin air" [you either "get it" or you don't] -- the sabbatical was superb! 1998 - 1999: Greater Orlando, Florida area field service operations for Productivity Solutions, Inc., in Jacksonville. PSI was the leader in high-security automated check-out systems for retail businesses; they were later acquired by IBM. 1999 - 2002: Histology lab product line development for Mopec, Inc., a manufacturer and distributor of pathology laboratory equipment and supplies; located in the Detroit metro area, Michigan. CONTEMPORARY: Independent multi-role consultant for bio-medical service operations and technical marketing needs. Page Top
 Last website update: 2008.03.19 @ 07:00 UTC |
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],
West Virginia was settled by a group of Swiss and German
immigrants, who came via Brooklyn, N. Y., in 1869. In
addition to farmers and herdsmen, many craftsmen and
professionals were among the settlers: stone masons;
carpenters; painters; wagon, shoe, watch, hat, and cheese
makers; musicians; teachers; ministers; and doctors.
By 1874 additional groups arriving from other parts of
the U.S. and Switzerland had boosted the population to
308; the population is now approximately 216.
