The professional me... I'm an assistant professor of anatomy at the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine. This is my personal page, reflecting the non-professional (not necessarily unprofessional) side of my life. My professional web site is not up yet. In fact, this family web site is, in part, a training exercise for me, allowing me to cut my teeth on web design. When I came to Ohio University in 1995, they set up a page for me; it's very out of date (and not particularly attractive), but here it is.

I do have other interests...

• Music

I'm very much into both playing and listening to music, principally blues, old-timey country, and Grateful Dead. I've been playing guitar for more than twenty years, so here are pictures of two of my oldest and dearest friends: my Fender Stratocaster and my Suzuki Three-S acoustic guitar.

There's a lot of great music available on the internet, but the MP3 format has transformed the way I listen to music. For those who may not be aware, MP3 compresses CD-quality music into manageable files---MP3 is for music what jpeg is for images. The MP3 player I use is Winamp, which can be downloaded for free. For the most part I download live concerts, and many are available legally on the net. My all-time favorite musician is Eric Clapton, but legal MP3s of his music are not widely available, if at all. The Grateful Dead permit MP3 distribution of concert recordings (as long as no profit is made). My favorite Grateful Dead MP3 site is Sugarmegs.

My favorite Stevie Ray Vaughan site, offering a new concert every month, is Vince's Stevie Ray Vaughan Page.

A pretty decent MP3 search engine can be found at Lycos.

• Beast Wars Transformers

My son Sam and I have gotten into Beast Wars Transformers in a pretty big way. We first got hooked by the television show and its wonderful computer graphics. As we got involved, we discovered the surprisingly sophisticated and rich story arcs. Of course, being good Americans, we bought into the merchandising and have a lot of the toys. Via the internet, we discovered a whole community of "transfans," many of whom write their own stories and scripts ("fanfics," as they're known). Sam and I download the fanfics and read them as bedtime stories; we have fun trying to duplicate the voices on the show (I do a good Megatron, but I can't touch Sam's Waspinator), and Sam gets great reading practice since he has to follow along and there are no pictures. We're so into Beast Wars that we decided to "give back" to the BW community by developing our own web site, The Golden Disc, in reference to a recurring theme on the show involving the golden record sent aboard the Voyager spacecraft by NASA.

• Sam, my son

Without question, the most important thing I do is spend time with my son, Sam. His activities keep us all very busy.
...Maybe I'm just an indulgent dad,
...Maybe I'm just reliving my childhood,
...Maybe I've finally got the little brother I never had,
...but Sam keeps life fun and never too serious. The world likely would be a better place if we all could just sit on the floor more often and play with stuffed animals.

• Patty, my best friend, my wife

Patty is my partner-for-life, and the one person who knows me inside and out.

Of course, I have all sorts of other interests, such as my extended family, shootin' hoops and shootin' pool, surfing the 'net, and checking out stuff on eBay, but Patty and Sam are my real life.