Hey, I am John and here is a little bit about me. I have always been close to the church, even as a young boy. My family were avid church-goers and we were involved with our church family for almost everything we did, but my goal wasn’t necessarily to be a full time church worker.
I wound up going to the Naval Academy and getting a degree in Computer Engineering. I became fascinated with data and the manipulation of data in different ways, so I took some night classes in Database Administration and began to conclude that my profession should revolve around this.
At the Academy there was always a lot of partying, but I was not much of a participant. Drinking never really did much for me and I never had any inclination to try any of the plethora of drugs that were going around. I was always very self-confidant and these things just seemed to detract from that.
Returned to Virginia after graduation and took a job at CarMax as an entry level Database Administrator (DBA). After a few years there, I saw an ad in the paper for a DBA position with a small, newly formed group that were the IT department for Continental Cablevision. The group mandate was to develop a billing system that the company could deploy nationally to whichever remote locations wanted it. I was hired there and stayed for about 10 years before Continental got bought out by MediaOne, which decided they didn’t want to be in the billing system business.
In the mean time I also became fascinated with the solar system and how it came into being. I became involved with a group called Reasons To Believe, started by scientists who became convinced the deeper they studied it that the universe did not get here by coincidence. I started a local chapter and had monthly meetings in my house where we would go over material put out by the founders (it was started by a guy named Hugh Ross). I had gotten married shortly after I returned from the Academy and had a couple daughters by this time so life was extremely busy.
We began doing a lot of travelling all over the country with my job, so dividing time became quite a challenge. Finally after the Continental group disbanded, I began looking elsewhere. I went to Circuit City, a big electronics company headquartered in Richmond, as a DBA. Worked there until Circuit City went bankrupt 10 years later.
In the mean time my wife and I had joined the Third Presbyterian Church not far from our house, and I became very involved as an assistant pastor and working with the Church Elders doing counselling and other personal assistance tasks.
I met Angie Prame and her husband Bill at cheerleading competitions, as our daughters attended the same high school. We got to become good friends with the Prames and through them at different get-togethers met a friend of theirs, Bryan Hope, as well. We have all kept in very close contact. I am retired now and was honored to have been invited to help out with the blog. We have a ton of experiences that I hope will make for an enjoyable read.