Having grown up in Sacramento, California -- with its mostly mild winters and hot, dry summers -- I expected life in Fairbanks, Alaska to be a little bit different. It was, and I liked it. However, after just five years there I found myself in the fringes of metro Atlanta; it snows more often here than in Sacramento, but the humid summers are brutal. And although Sacramento's metro area bordered on a million people by the time I left there in the mid-1990s, the sparse population of Interior Alaska spoiled me; the crowds, snarled roads and urban problems of metro Atlanta have failed after 11 years to win me over.

My college degrees are in Useless Knowledge (1991, Calif. St. U. Sacramento) and Common Sense (1999, U. of Alaska Fairbanks). For some reason neither has proven to be the ticket to wealth and power they were made out to be by those who charge tuition. If you've been reading lately about a so-called Higher Education Bubble, it's old news to me.

I'm a Life Member of the National Rifle Association and also belong to the Moose and Sons of the American Revolution. And I'm a "ham" -- call sign AK4MC, hence the domain name hosting this page.

I have a wife, four cats and a dog, and I drive a Bronco.