So listen. Here’s the thing. Most of what you find about me on the web isn’t true. Well, maybe not most. But a lot of what you read in my weblog is false, fake, embellished or just plain old-fashioned poppycock. You can probably deduce the reasoning behind that. When a lot of one’s life is lived on the web, a lot of one’s biography must be protected. Rarely (at least in my experience) does one’s private life match word-for-word with his online life.

Hi. My name is Space. As you’ve probably also guessed, that is not my given name. But it’s what I go by, and for all intensive porpoises online, you don’t necessarily need to know my real name. I don’t hide from it though. If one were to try to find me by my name alone, he would have to make many stops first. It’s a very common name.

I started this site (at least in spirit) back in 1996 in the dark, cramped confines of a room in the barracks of an Air Force Base. A friend and I decided we needed a presence on the web, and thus began an endeavor that still thrills and excites me today. Not so much the ‘having an online presence’ part of having an online presence. But rather, the design of it. I love coding. I love developing. And most of all, I love designing. I spent some time as a UX Designer in my professional life, but the love and passion of design has dominated many areas of my life for most of my living days.

I was born in the seventies. I wore the bad brown pants and orange shirts that went way out of style for the next two decades. I find myself returning to that style these days though. It’s funny how things make their way full circle. I’m not a style-conscious man though, for the most part. I buy what I believe will bring me comfort and still look reasonably decent. This is not to say I don’t care at all, of course – but you will never find me sporting a shirt with the designer’s name emblazoned across the front. Or jeans that cost fourteen times the standard amount just because they have a certain tag on them. Let’s face it: Lucky or Diesel jeans may look really cool, but it’s all made of the same denim my Rustlers are made of.

It’s difficult for me being a style-blind parent to understand and allow my children to be fashionable in the name-brand spirit of the word. Try as I might to steer them toward more cost-effective yet handsome clothing, it is a battle I have yet to win. I have a girl who needs her blouses to shout Justice! I also have a third child – a daughter – who is still very young, and only needs it all to be pink.

I married a Filipino woman. She makes the third. Why I couldn’t have found her first I have no idea. But I know I would not have had my two daughters, so maybe that’s the only reason. What’s crazy about my wife is that we know a lot of the same people, and hung out a lot of the same places, but never met until we – well, until we met. It’s awfully eerie how close we got to meeting so many times before we actually did.

I don’t believe in fate or superstition. I don’t believe breaking a mirror or ducking under a ladder will have any effect on me or anyone else. I don’t even believe in black cats. I do love a good conspiracy theory though. I am fascinated by all the different points of view when it comes to a good one, though I wouldn’t label myself a conspiracy theorist. I scarcely subscribe to the end result. I just like to read about them. I believe there are agencies out there that proliferate some of them. I don’t, however, believe that a jet-fuel fire can melt steel.

Some time ago I discovered that my interests and hobbies are cyclical – like mood swings. What I love to do today might be tomorrow’s fish-and-chips paper. But it will return. I always return to all of my interests in time. Sometimes only once every few years, others every few months. But the same ones always do return. Painting and poetry, for instance, I haven’t seen in two decades. But I’ve recently picked up a brush again.

Back in 1994, about a year and a half after I dropped out of school (the day after I received my diploma, of course) I decided to join the Air Force. It was, I think, the best decision I ever made. The military instilled in me a discipline I rarely see duplicated in the civilian world. I was not a special forces guy, or a black ops guy. I was a lowly Airman who started out working on bombers and then switched to working on computers. I have been to Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. I’ve been to Area 51. No. I did not see aliens or UFOs.

After being honorably discharged from four years of service, I made perhaps the smoothest transition in the history of ever to the civilian world. I literally drove off the base on a Thursday, and the following Monday scooted up to my desk at a business class web-hosting company. I spent twenty years in IT before finally getting tired of it and retiring to something I actually love doing. And that won’t drive me insane. I am once again a mechanic. I work on pools and pool equipment out in the sunshine. I don’t clean them. I just repair them. But I get to be outside. Drive a company vehicle and listen to podcasts and fix pool equipment. I’m sometimes done by noon. My boss doesn’t make me stay until five just because that’s what society deems appropriate. I love it.

This site has existed in some form or fashion for twenty-five-plus years. In 1996, technologies were far different, and I had a lot to learn about html. I have learned though, having taught myself most of what I know about development, and now know several languages to enhance that pursuit. A lot of people ask me after having seen my weblog, “Space, how do you find so much to write about?” And indeed, I do write about a lot. When you’ve been blogging for fifteen-plus years on an E/N site, you’ve pretty much covered every topic there is to cover.

Back when weblogs and E/N sites were a hot topic on the web, there were five or six really big ones that all traded links and all took a lot of traffic. I ran one of those. Now days, the site is a lot smaller, a lot less busy, and more about the design than the content – at least to me. A reader would never know this, of course. Because the content I wrote way back then is still in my archives. You’ll find it on this site.

Writing has always been a favorite of mine. I write books, short stories, poems, blogs, journals, songs and technical papers. I love the sport. I also appreciate, respect and follow the rules of grammar to my greatest ability, at all times. Even while texting. There aren’t many things I hate worse than seeing “C U 2nite! LOL!” in any capacity. AOLSpeak, as I call it, has a special place in my heart. That black place called hatred that makes me boil with rage as the blood finds it.

Writing music is obviously a lot different than prose. I’ve done my fair share of both. I once fronted a local Dallas band for several years. I was the guitarist and lead singer. I scarcely have time for that anymore, though I do sometimes hit the open-mic night at the local rock and blues bar. I’m classically trained on the piano and drums. I played the trap set for some twenty-five years and taught myself rhythm guitar, which I’ve played for about twenty. It’s fun to pick up my son’s guitar and sing a little ditty to the children before putting them to bed, such as Don’t Worry ‘Bout the Bedbugs – the Rats Will Take Care of ‘Em, or If You Sleep Walk At Night, Stay the Hell Away From My Cake and so on.

I also collect things. It has been said about me that I grew out of mere collecting items, and graduated to collecting collections themselves. That’s how much I love to collect. If I find a bottle cap on the table and go to throw it away and find another one on the way, I may just keep them both. Keys, dice, pirate doubloons, baseball cards, watches, artist discographies, and – well, the list goes on and on. And on. At least all of these are small things though. Unlike my oldest daughter. She recently decided to collect American Girl dolls. How many of those do you think you can fit on a shelf?

Brewing beer is another of those things I really enjoy, but that takes up a lot of time. About every Saturday you can find me out in my BrewStation boiling wort and enjoying the fruits of my labor. This is a new hobby of mine, as I only discovered it in 2012, shortly before the world was supposed to end. But it’s something I think will stick. I make really good beer. And it’s a lot of fun. I even tried growing my own hops. Until my dog decided he should do a little cleaning up of my hop garden. I have found with anything though, if you become a student of the art, you can master it. I learn everything there is to know about anything I decide to tackle.

Back in school, I didn’t do a whole lot of studying or paying attention. I cared more about the girls in my class than the books. But since I’ve grown up, I’ve found a real love for catching up on all that learning I missed back then. Half my library at home is non-fiction. I read a lot of history, science and biography. I am almost, therefore, constantly learning something. Even my unproductive time, like driving, is consumed by it. I listen to audio books while I drive. I have to be learning.

Photography, cataloguing, researching, building, designing, SCUBA diving and stargazing are also frequent likes for me. Sometimes I feel like there just aren’t enough hours in the day for me to enjoy all the things I love to enjoy. Perhaps this is why time-travel is my favorite genre to read. If I could find a way to harvest more time…

So that about wraps it up. Now you know who I am. In the interest of writing good non-fiction, everything here is the absolute truth. Embellishment has no real place in a biography, at least in my eyes. I have plenty of time for that elsewhere. And it is not a presumptuous notion thinking I need a biography at all. It just seems like a long time coming – a full and detailed account of what makes me who I am. Why? Because I’ve never really had one. And I’m not very good at writing about myself. Maybe this is good practice. Don’t we all need to get to know ourselves a little bit better?

Anyhow, thanks for reading. Enjoy the website.

– space