Long ago in a galaxy far, far away. . . . Well, deer season of 1972 in the wilderness of northern New Hampshire, at least.

I was born.

Shortly thereafter, when my parents saw it fit to feed me solid food, I had my first taste of moose meat. Later, when they ran out of moose meat, they tried to feed me ground beef and I spit it right out. "Yuck." For those of you who haven't tried moose meat, this delicacy is extremely lean -- so lean that it requires butter or another fat to be added to the pan along with it. Ground beef, on the other hand, is laden with icky beef fat.

The whole moose meat experience kicked off a weird childhood (which, undoubtedly, lead to my weird adulthood). As a child, my tastes in food were rather strange -- I liked things such as sardines and prunes, but hated normal foods like pizza and things with sauces or mayonnaise added. My home was far away from all my schoolmates, so the only times I got to socialize with them was in school or on one of those rare occasions when my mother agreed to drive a friend of mine over to play. Therefore, I was a bit of a loner in elementary school.

However, being alone most of the day gave me the opportunity to develop my interests in the sciences. I read several children's books on various disciplines of science such as astronomy, geology, and zoology; thus, I wanted to be some sort of scientist when I grew up. The fact that I was constantly building things out of plastic, cardboard, and wood, combined with my propensity for taking apart my toys with my handy screwdriver set and designing new ones on paper, eventually made me decide to go to college to learn engineering.

Once I got into high school, my social life became more tolerable. I met more kids like myself, I started dating, etc.. I had a good time, but it seemed like something was missing.

Right after finishing my undergraduate career at Cornell, I needed to find myself a job. I was looking all over the country for something in consulting or manufacturing engineering. I had been thinking about going into the Supply Corps in the Navy or Air Force, but a small irregular heartbeat changed my mind about that. (I got better.)

Unfortunately, the 40+ hours I had been putting in weekly managing the Vermont Mountain Coffee Shoppe in Dryden, NY, plus the fact that I didn't have my own computer made it extremely difficult to look for jobs. I needed a change. I needed a town with a better job market. So I moved to the Detroit area.

Using the (patent-pending?) Maralason job search method, in which I sat down at the computer and used Maximizer to make phone calls and send faxes for several hours each weekday, I found a job in less than three weeks! On May 26, 1998, I started my employment with Hawtal Whiting, working with General Motors engineers at GM's Milford Proving Ground. A lot of my job was testing cars, collecting and analyzing data, benchmarking, and preparing reports and presentations. They called me Benchmarking Process Engineer. ("Process Engineer. Benchmarking Process Engineer.") I don't even think that "benchmarking" is a real word. Go figure. Since 1998, my job description has changed considerably, but more about that later.

Now, getting this job has a story behind it. Well, everything has a story behind it, but this one is actually interesting! My interview was on Tuesday, May 12th at noon. The office was in Troy, about 25 minutes away from where I was staying, and I had allowed myself 40 minutes for travel. Traveling along the Metro Parkway, I saw a sign letting me know that I had entered Troy. I had 15 minutes to spare! No problem, right? Well. . . .

I entered Troy. I drove through Troy. I left Troy. I was supposed to find the Stephenson Highway, and I had not seen the turn at all. Unfamiliar as I was with the area, I reasoned that Stephenson might not intersect the Metro Parkway in Troy. The office was located between 14 Mile and 15 Mile roads, so I decided to get onto 15 Mile in order to find Stephenson.

The funny thing about the towns on the west side of Detroit is that the mile roads aren't called mile roads. 16 Mile is called Big Beaver, 15 Mile is called Maple, etc.. So I got lost. For an hour.

I pulled into the parking lot just before 1:00. I wasn't feeling very optomistic about the outcome of the interview; I doubted that they would even see me after coming in an hour late. The receptionist told me that the person who was to interview me had left for the day. I had all but given up on Hawtal Whiting.

But another recruiter who handled different job openings came to meet me, and I had a great interview with her. She told me that it was rather serendipitous that I was meeting with her, because she had a position that she thought was perfect for me. She told me that she believed in fate, and that everything happens for a reason. Three days later, I was offered the position.

When the interview was over, I travelled north on Stephenson to where it changed names and intersected the Metro Parkway. . . .

But anyhow, I had mentioned that my job responsibilities had changed at the Milford Proving Ground. Well, they started me off as the creator of the Vehicle Development website (for internal use). Gradually, web design became a larger part of my workday and I was building more and more pages for the engineers.

In 2000, I was called upon to join both a new Web Strategies team and another team working on a new Systems Engineering website (as Systems Engineering was getting more and more emphasis in the vehicle development process at GM). With my previous webmastership in Vehicle Development, which became Performance Integration and, later, Vehicle Performance, I gained responsibility for another site. With the many 2000-2001 reorganizations and promotions of various directors, I became one of the head "Web Architects" for most of the Vehicle Integration area -- a significant portion of GM Engineering.

Of course, General Motors jumped on the bandwagon of outsourcing its websites to India. Somebody at GM claimed that it would save us money. However, it took me about 80% more time to fill out a request to get a change than it would have taken me to get the change done myself. Perhaps soon GM will collectively realize that this outsourcing is wasting money.

Then came 2005. Well, GM kept losing money; GM's management tried to cut costs by getting rid of workers (while keeping their managers). As a contract employee, I realized that I would be let go well before any direct GM employees.

I had to find a more stable job.