Meet the Owner biography

In case you may not have guessed, I'm one of the older stangers around. I started by taking watches and old radios apart back when radios had tubes in them, and digital displays were unheard of. I got a couple of good shocks, but that didn't stop my curiosity. I graduated to taking apart and building bicycles and then go-carts, and spent the summers after high school as an auto mechanic. In 1967, I dropped out of college and joined the Air Force, where I was trained as an aircraft mechanic. Working as an aircraft mechanic gave me a whole new perspective on how to do mechanical work/repairs. My travels in the Air Force started in Port Arthur Texas, my home town, to more time in Texas for basic & technical training. Next came a tour in South Viet Nam, then Florida, then Louisiana, and finally, Florida again. While in the Air Force, I got my FAA Airframe & Powerplant license, which allowed me to work on civilian aircraft. In 1975, I got out of the Air Force and went to work in general aviation as an A&P mechanic.

I hadn't been out long before I figured out that general aviation was a hard way to make a buck. Getting a job with a major airline would have been gravy, but as many times as I applied, it never happened. There were more crooks, liars and thieves in general aviation than you could find in the used car business. I worked for a company that flew the cancelled checks from one bank center to another for a while. They wrote almost as many hot checks to pay for things as the checks they carried for the banks. I left with them owing me two weeks pay, which I knew that I would never see. I walked down the ramp and got a job with a shop that rebuilt crashed airplanes and sold them. I should have known something was fishy when the owner said the guarantee for the rebuilt aircraft he sold was" Thirty feet into the air or thirty seconds of flight, whichever comes first". I went to work one day and found that that DEA agents had taken up residence. It turned out that the owner had rented an airplane to some drug smugglers who had crashed in it the phosphate pits outside of Lakeland, Florida. The DEA guys knew where the coffee was, they knew where the sugar was, and they even knew where to look if there wasn't any coffee in the can next to the coffeepot. That was scary - I didn't like the association of my name with illegal activity that invited such close scrutiny.

About that time, I made two decisions that improved my life considerably. First, I decided to use my G.I. Bill to go to college to get a 2 year Associate of Science in Electronics, which I completed in January of 1979. Secondly, in July 1977, I became a born again Christian, which made a real improvement in life in general, and especially in my success in college. Both decisions have had an enormous impact on my life for the better. In May of 1979, I left general aviation and went to work as a computer tech for Digital Equipment Corporation. That lasted until January 1989, when a serious error in judgment on my part caused me to part company with them. I spent the next the next four years learning PC repair and PC networking from the ground up, with some stints with some good companies and some lousy ones. In October of 1993, I completed the first of my major networking certifications - a Novell CNE. Hard work and lots of prayer saw me through three more job changes and more certifications - Novell 4.x CNE, Novell Master CNE, Novell 5.x CNE and Microsoft MCSE. Some ups and downs in my personal life meant changes too – my first wife left for the third and final time, and I was remarried to a wonderful Christian woman. Things just keep on getting better and I give God the credit for it. In 1998 I went to work for a major bank in Orlando, Florida as a PC hardware/software support tech. It's a great job, and I have lots of time to lean new things such as web design and new software such as Microsoft's latest operating systems.

I had always wanted a high performance car, but never had one until I bought my Mustang in 1992. I was the second owner and it had about 50,000 miles on it. The car was in good mechanical shape, but the Florida sun had faded the paint. In the summer of 1996, I was rear ended and had the collision damage fixed and a new Macco paint job. By July 1999, the Florida sun had faded the paint - again. New paint - some day - after I get the mods done. Like most of us enthusiasts, my plans are bigger than my pocket book, so things may take a while.