About Me

I'm married, for 37 years to a wonderful person, my friend and wife Christine.  We went through 12 years of public school together and graduated side-by-side in 1978.  We have two beautiful children - Avery our son who is now 20 and Heidi our daughter who is 17. Where does time go.

Christine

For a number of years, since 1985, I've been a technology professional.  I certified very early on the Intel x86 (8086/80286/80386/80486 and Pentium) platforms AKA "the PC Platform."  I also certified as a COBOL and RPG programmer both at Western Piedmont Community College and IBM's RightSource Academy in Charlotte, NC.  I received the theory at WPCC but the real world experience from IBM.  During the early years of my technology career (1983 to 1993) I worked as a full-time police officer at the Valdese Police Department.  Often local companies would ask me to administer their systems or modify their business applications while I was on the clock working as a police officer, several of which were banks.  This worked out good as I could also offer them the value-add service of police services while working on their mainframe applications:-).  In 1993 I left law enforcement and became a full-time propeller-head for a local manufacturing company.  I was given the unique opportunity at Hickory Hill Furniture to work in both midrange (AS/400) and mainframe (Unisys) environments that really helped my knowledge of data and their structures.  This involvement led to my becoming a programmer as a part of my regular job description.  I also learned to transition data easily between hosts and Windows PC's.

Avery

After thirteen years with Hickory Hill Furniture Corporation and many successful projects that dealt with software and hardware, I was laid off in June of 2006.  I did get to choose and train my replacements; and for doing that well I received a nice severance package, but I was still laid off.

From the time I was first laid off until the fall of 2007 I hired out as a private consultant and worked on various projects for local businesses.  Most of the time was devoted to Windows LAN, desktop and server support.

In the fall of 2007 I went to work for the Burke County Public Schools.  I served the Burke County students and faculty of my school, JC Draughn High School, located at 709 Lovelady Rd. in Valdese, NC as a multiple assigned teacher assistant. I worked full-time in the following areas: In School Suspension, Media Center Assistant and a classroom and virtual Online Curriculum as a Certified iSchool Facilitator (NovaNET, Plato, APEX Learning, NCVPS and UNC-G iSchool).

Heidi

I loved working with teens, but it wasn't to last.  In June of 2011, after deep cuts to the local districts budget by the federal and state governments - I was laid off... again.

What's a body to do?  I mean, why are people that just want to work, pay taxes, raise their children and live decently - why do they seem to be chosen to succumb to the ills and fate of an economy?  After all, the choices made that actually steer the economy, that neither you nor I make, are made by people who are totally disconnected from our daily lives but yet make such profound and nation affecting judgement's and places us ALL in their direct "economic collateral damage" path.  I call this an Ecolopath.  What's an Ecolopath?

An Ecolopath [e-cul-path] "is the pathway of damages that contains all of the residual connections to people, businesses and government in an economy, so that when financial catastrophe occurs, whether intentional or unintentional, damages spread so out of control that its close proximity (associations) to or with the area and  its people are also damaged, often by a greater proportion of wealth to area ratio."  In such a scenario the wealthy often emerge either unscathed or their wealth grows, i.e. Wal-Mart and its owners and stock holders experienced this financial phenomena after the 2007 housing market crash.

When a tree in a forest is struck by lightening and begins to fall, because it's big and consumes more space than any tree around it, when it falls it tends to take other smaller trees down with it simply because they were close and had no way to move themselves, killing wildlife, insect life and changing the environment for a very long time.  The big tree that fell is not representative of the wealthy, but are sections of an economy or markets within an economy.

When we apply such an idea to things like legislation i.e. NAFTA, or intentional financial ruin i.e. the ENRON Scandal which brought down one of the big 5 accounting firms Arthur Anderson, that ruined many a retirees future.  Oh, and let's not forget the U.S. Senator from Arizona that was an original member of the Keating 5, where a group of government officials that were major investors (AKA financiers) in the demise of over 700 Savings and Loans during the l980's and 1990's where thousands of bond holders (US citizens) lost their entire savings.  The man convicted in the affair was Charles Keating.  Some of this can be found in the list of financial crises at Wikipedia.

Anyway, its these type of occurrences that adversely affect those of us that aren't members of the rich and famous elite.  Why does it have to be this way, and is there anything that can be done to prevent it from happening again.  Is it me, or does it also seem to you that the U.S. is often engaged in fixing laws that lawyers and accountants find a way around with new ways to hood-wink the unsuspecting public.