My intent here is to share some items that I feel might be of interest…
Everything here is
personal
to me, yet is published for public consumption, without reservation
Hope you enjoy your visit! Don Shave
My Family, my Home & some of my Hobbies…
Scroll to the end for career details?
As the creator/author of this & of many other websites, each of which hold a fair amount of my history (!),
I am a gracefully-aging cultured British lad
(of actual regal ancestry!)
and a 1st-generation-immigrant to the United States of America…
I sure do get to be a pretty happy old fellow!!
Living today in a peaceful, pleasant countryside-setting a few miles north of Atlanta in Georgia (a delightful southern state!),
I am consistently blessed to be with my particularly happy wife, Sandy, a simply marvelous lady whose personality, aura & happiness
glow…
her children & their spouses bring
youngsters
to me as "Grampy Don"—such a delight!
I’ve 2 sons, one who is today happily married & one who was sadly lost in early 2002
(view his page here?);
my
eDiary
and
profile
pages each share more details if you’re interested…
Am also blessed to be with an extensive global family!
My wife Sandy’s family,
my many direct/step-brothers & sisters (with in-laws of each) & all of their children,
my many nephews/nieces, uncles/aunties, & many, many cousins
along with their families
as well as (of course) our many, many friends!
These wonderful people live in & around the USA, in
Wisconsin,
Georgia
and in various additional places, like Washington DC, California, Alabama, Chicago, Florida & many others…
they're also around the world in
England,
South Korea
and
Australia
as well as sailing the oceans and
(walking, several years back!)
around Europe…
You may be certain that as you read these, other places are today being occupied and/or being visited!!
I've built up a quite a collection of historical data for my family tree since the mid-80s; view the
development history
page for info,
a summary of the
data/tools
that I used/etc (scroll down to near the bottom of the page)
& my
older stats
showing some of the original details?
Take a visit to my active
tree data
or to my
Ancestry
tree (link may change!), each virtual duplicates of my local tree data that shares the data in the "standard" tree view.
Also, view my "extended family" on either of these sites; people there who are living are partially visible & are set to private
Note: Ancestry requires you to sign in; eMail me if you need help?
You can also eVisit with me at my
home page, my older
home page, my
FaceBook
account (where you also have to sign in), my
LinkedIn page, or my
experimental home page
as well as at my collection of visual slices taken over many years (in several places) which are tucked into a little
photo album…
Have fun!
My birth was in the mid-50's, born & growing up in Bournemouth, England, a seaside town with miles & miles of white beaches that's about 75 miles southwest of London
After spending much of the
70's
in the
British Army,
stationed in various
places
around
Europe
(mostly at the
7th Armoured Brigade HQ),
I ended up living in London for ~3 years, 1stlearning about repairing & programming computer equipment & then hired by
Burroughs,
a company who had their mainframe computers in the basement of the Midland Bank HQ in North London
I subsequently traveled with them to live in the
Washington, DC
area, continuing to do **exactly** the same thing with their computers in the World Bank HQ basement, only with a 1/3 pay raise!
These physically enormous machines did batch-processing for banking & financial transactions, requiring many square feet of controlled & conditioned space with dozens of 6-foot tall cabinets & hundreds of connecting cables… quite a rush!
Looking back a little, I became one of those 1st Generation Immigrants when I relocated in the late 70’s on an international work visa where I’ve held a dual citizenship (for both the US & the UK) since 2007…
after my time with Burroughs & Fairchild (see below), I was developing embedded software with various businesses in the DC area
(including my Creative Logic Software, LLC business)
in the early 80’s before joining
GE Medical Systems
(now GE Healthcare) in
Waukesha,
Wisconsin & where I settled with my family in July of 1986.
We later lived in the
Oconomowoc
area for several years; I separated from my prior spouse there…
Before getting
married
in '97, Sandy & I brought & moved into a large house on an acre-sized country lot, surrounded by beautiful, mature oak trees near
Sussex
in 1994.
After spending several years there we decided in late 2003 to build our "Palace in Nirvana," a
house
that was built to our detailed plan…
the work was finished in early December 2004 (quite an adventure!) & we moved in, enjoying our new resort for a dozen years!
We are settled today (as of this update) in a lovely house near
Roswell
in the state of Georgia, where we had moved in October 2014 to enjoy our grandkids!
My wife Sandy's favorite hobby is still planting, growing & nurturing (well, most of the time!) oodles & oodles
of flowers, shrubs, grass, trees, "weeds" & so forth (with a little help from our grandkids & me!) all around the garden,
making our surrounding areas simply exquisite to sit in & "soak up" while we leisurely enjoy
breakfasts out at the weekend or playing with the youngsters—an absolute delight!
She’s also spent some time over the past few years supporting our subdivision HOA as president (for a year)
and as co-president (for another year) with the North Fulton Master Gardeners
group,
providing gardening community education classes;
gardening education for young children;
university & college scholarships for horticulture students;
local demonstration gardens maintained by the group & the annual Garden Faire
I love to poke around our computers or play with our audio systems & on our new iPad (music from Stevie Ray Vaughn, Greg Allman & his brothers, Led Zeppelin, Yes, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Mick Jagger & his gang, Deep Purple… yes, I could go on!!) as well as our video storage & TV "toys". All of this is just so much fun along with many, many books (that are sadly read far less often these days, due to my reduced memory skills)… Adam Hall (in Quiller), Martin Cruz Smith, Sagan, Ludlum, Clancy, Deighton, and Jack Higgins to name just a few.
Sandy & I have both now moved on after spending a considerable number of our waking hours with "The General" and his relatives (!) over many years, & are today enjoying retirement… We do strive to enjoy as much of Mother Nature's outdoor life as we possibly can, walking, visiting etc as well as living a very busy social life with friends & family!
I'll close this part of my story with a healthfront update, where I'm today "aging gracefully," continuing as a 25+ year Successful Survivor of a brain tumor, a simply devastating disease for many. Some key details about this complexity may be viewed at my personal page which shares several thoughts & other elements of significance. My wife's health is also good & she's just not aging at all !!
As a final set of thoughts for my Bio, am sharing a little of my work history
(a detailed report is here)…
In early 2009 I re-established my consulting business
Creative Logic Software, LLC
from my “forced GE retirement” after 30+ years of the office-based world…
this all went idle in 2015 when I stopped working!
I had built up my business in the early 1980's as part of a major career transition from the world of service & maintenance of computer equipment with
Burroughs Corp.
to a new life with development of software & systems for
medical imaging devices…
After some hectic years in the mid-80's, CLS went "on hold" for 20+ years… I had a short-term contract to complete a "difficult embedded-firmware project" at GE Medical Systems (now GE Healthcare) where the rapid & very successful deployment of my task was viewed by the section chiefs as such a high-end business win that they asked me to take on a full time position, which I did—pretty cool for a fella that didn't even complete high school!
Prior to starting up my CLS business, a few decades were spent working in…
a) the British military at the Harrogate
AAC
& then with the
7th Armoured Brigade
in Soltau, Germany, including a short tour of active duty in Belfast, Ireland;
b)
Burroughs Corp.
in both England & the Eastern states of the US;
c)
Fairchild Industries,
which is near
Germantown, MD;
d) & finally in the mid-80's, out at
GE Healthcare
in Waukesha, WI for the rest of my working life
Multiple key leadership roles were held in each of these with various activities, most active in the GEHC Engineering teams, developing products and their like & then focusing on the world of internal problems around the design & development quality systems…
Should you be curious, my CV (my extended resume) can be viewed here for more details of my working career… Enjoy!!
