I currently live in Northern Virginia with my wife and daughter. I am orginally from NYC though. As a kid I spent summers doing the usual things, but since my Dad was a Teacher, we had summers off as a family. This meant trips to the Jersey Shore and camping in the mountains of upstate NY, Northern Pennsylvania and Vermont. Those days were the best, and gave me exposure to many things not normally associated with city life including the stars. I can't say that I have always been interested in astronomy, but I have always enjoyed looking up.
I have 2 hobbies or more accurately, passionate frustrations. Playing the guitar and taking pictures of the cosmos from my yard. I started to play the guitar at around 15 or 16 and was consumed by it, I played all the time. It actually was the catalyst that got me involved in my carrer, Computers and Electronics. I was lacking in some direction after High School when I stumbled into an electronics program at a technical school in NYC. I found a group of similarly motivated folks there and was hooked, all the years of complaining about taking math as a kid were gone. During those years I forged friendships with alot of great people. Many of them are still very much a part of my life today.
After finishing my degree in 1984 and a few years in the field I found myself as a teacher at said Technical school. teaching classes in Digital Electronics, Computer programming, (anyone remember TRS80's) and other related subjects. In 1991 I was offered a job to relocate to the Northern Virginia Office of a computer company that needed someone to do Field Service on Digital Prepress Equipment. I had always loved to escape the city as a kid and go on our family trips to the mountains, so after having a chance to scout out the area I decided to take the offer and move south.
My new life in Va offered me the chance to mountain bike in the woods after work and spend weekends camping in Shenandoah National Park. Certainly a different life than hanging out in the "Village", riding subways and the Staten Island Ferry. The original Manhattan side of the Ferry is gone now, it burned down about 10 years ago. You used to be able to see the old Army building at 1 Whitehall Street from there. The building was imortalized in the Arlo Guthrie song "Alices Restaurant".
I have always enjoyed live music, Living in NYC was great for this. There was always someone playing in the city. We Saw Led Zeppelin, The WHO, Santana, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Yes and of course the Grateful Dead. Frank Zappa on Holloween at the Palladium (which is also gone) was a yearly event. Hot Tuna and Jorma Solo were always a treat. I still see Hot Tuna anytime they play in the area and Jorma has a new CD out, Blue Country Heart, its fantastic. I've been a "Dead Head" since my 1st show in 1980 and I spent many years chasing them around the country. My Dad used to tell me "they should pay you to go see them", He had a great sense of humor.
So , here I am in Virginia, and I get laid off from the company that moved me down here. It's the early 90's and the economy is tanking. Luckily I get pulled in by one of the customers of my "old" company. So I start the next phase of my carrer working at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Md. The guy who made all this possible has since passed. Grady Cox, what can I say, he saved me from going back to the Big Apple to who knows what. I stayed in touch with Grady after he retired and moved to FLA. I had a chance to talk to him right before he passed, I am very glad to have known him. Working at NASA it's kinda hard to not gain some interest in the cosmos. Since I was working in a group that managed, among other things, a Photolab that processed images for various agencies. I got a chance to see lots of really cool images and learn alot about the Photgraphic process.
In 1995 I get the call that no one ever wants to get. My Dad had a fatal heart attack while playing golf with his buddies in Nj. Dad had been retired from the NYC Board of Education for about 3 years and had already had one heart attack and bypass surgery a couple of years before. He was 65. Due to layoffs at NASA, I took a field service job working for AGFA, back to the Digital Prepress world.
Around this time I meet my wife, we date and spend a lot of time driving around the Beltway to each others apartments. I decide field service is not what it used to be and take a job for a small engineering company in Md. The commute stinks but the job is fun and I get to play with alot of neat stuff. Then My wife and I decide to live together, and I move to Reston Va.
Well, we decide that my current commute is a little much and I apply for and get a job with the Internet Engineering
group with Mci. I am working in Vint Cerfs' group and having a great time working on the Internet here in the "Silicon Valley of the East Coast".
My wife also works in Reston and we are having lots of fun. Moving things along we get married and buy a house in the "country".
Lots of big changes happen in the Internet world here in Northern Va and suffice it to say, there was never a dull moment.
Well while I was doing all this star hoping and imaging, our daughter was born. There isn't enough room here for me to tell you how much this means to us. When she was about 2 she would ask me to take her out and look at the stars and moon. On nights when the weather is permitting, she comes out to help me setup my stuff. When it's really cold out she says "You go out and setup your stuff daddy, I'm going to stay in here". She is 4 now, its just amazing to watch her grow.
The world has changed alot in the last 2 years. Being from NYC and having lots of family and friends there made the events of 9/11 a very personal event. A friend of mine and the brother of one of my lifelong friends was lost that day. Anthony Tempesta left behind a wife, a son and a daughter. Anthony was a very accomplished Bass player, you knew you were in for a good night of music when his band was playing. We miss Anthony very much, here is a Link to a Legacy.com page dedicated to Anthony.
Currently I am working in a non-Internet company doing computer work. I sold all of my electric guitar equipment, except
a pretty decent homemade Fender Strat. I am playing acoustic guitar alot now, a Martin D-18GE. Its amazing. My daughter loves to
dance and sing along.
One of the things I didn't mention was I pretty much stopped playing the guitar for about 6 years.
Kept alot of gear, but with wife/kid and telescopes, guitar took a back seat.
I am relearning to play and really making an effort to be more technical as well. I am devoting my relearning to Bluegrass and
Fingerstyle Blues.
The music of Jorma Kaukonen, The Rev Gary Davis, Doc Watson, Tony Rice ...etc ... are my main influences right now.
Thanks for reading this far ......
Doug