No, I am not a creation of the the galaxy wide community to combat the Mad Mind when it I grow up in a few billion years (see Arthur C. Clarke's "Against the Fall of Night"), I am a middleaged man from Texas. But I that novel was the first science fiction book I ever read, back in about 1962.

The first book I ever read was the "The Golden Book of the Moon" in first grade. I decided that if reading will teach me about astronomy, then it is very wonderful and I try to read as much as I can every day. Blessed Be for the Wide World Web!

I discovered AstronomyCast and have listened to the first 69 episodes so far. Too bad I did not know about that conference here in Austin before! So it goes. Faiser and Pamela RAWK! Dr. Gay is my first choice for Science Officer on my personal Starship - I will let you know after it is built.

A working class victim of the Second Indochinese War, I never made it to college but I did raise a couple of daughters who now struggle with my grandkids. <sigh> I don't wanna talk about it. I am also challeged by spelling, mathematics, and can produce an amazing amount of typos - especially involving tense and plurals.

My commerical computering job was sent to India in 2002 and now I do customer service for a major multinational on the night shift that decided it needed at least ONE call center in the States. Keeps me off the streets. I get off work at 6 am and have a decent view of the southern sky and have witness the Space Shuttle/ISS, Venus and Jupiter in conjunction and more stars than I thought possible in this city.

One of these days, I will have a power chair with binoculars with 250cm objectives. I do like to dream and loudly, too.

I love to think in billions of years.

I am still sadded to realize that the oceans will boil in about 50 x10^6 AD. I was so used to thinking something like that would not happen for at least several billion years. So, we need to get it together and mass produce self sustaining O'Neil colonies that can be moved into further orbits.

But seriously, I do fear the time of gigadeath will come first.