I live and work in Herndon, VA. Herndon, VA is a suburb of Washington, DC and is in the heart of the High Technology Corridor on the border of Northwestern Fairfax County and Eastern Loudoun county. This Technology Corridor has a large number of technology companies headquarted in the Washington area and is also home to many sizable tech centers of companies headquartered on the West Coast.
I work for Deltek, the leading provider of enterprise management software for project-focused organizations. I joined Deltek on November 1, 2010 as a Sr. Principal Configuration and Release Engineer.
I was born in George Washington Hospital on July 19, 1951 when my family lived in Arlington VA.
At the age of 2 1/2 my family moved into my childhood home in Alexandria VA.
For my freshman year of high school I attended T.C. Williams High School of "Return of the Titans" fame for the first quarter of the year. The day before Thanksgiving of my freshman year, I went into the hospital and was diagnosed with Infectious Hepatitis. I spent 37 days in the hospital and came home in time for New Years Eve.
I spent the rest of my freshman year at home and had three tutors that taught me Earth Science, Geometry, Spanish and English.
Fortunately I was able to go back to school for my sophomore year. We had sold our house and moved to an apartment in Alexandria, VA and I started my sophomore year at Francis C. Hammond High School. I was on the Dean's List every quarter throughout my high school career including the year I was homebound. I was a "geek" in school and was most comfortable in Math or Science class. I took five yars of high school math (starting in eighth grade) and four years of science. The only classes other than Math or Science that I was really "comfortable" in were Humanities (experimental at the time) and journalism. I was a reporter for the The Salvo, Hammond's newpaper and took journalism for two years in high school. I had a number of articles published in the Alexandria Gazette.
As a lark, I took Data Processing in my senior year of high school since my brother was a programmer at Washington Gas at the time. I wanted to "find out what it was all about". I guess I had an apptitude for computers and it was my summer job between high school and college and in the summers between college years. I went to work for a computer manufacturer in 1973 and have been in the computer industry ever since.
I have always lived in Northern Virginia so I am a "Washington native".
I am a big Washington Redskins fan (even when they are not so good) and have season tickets. I also constantly watch the Washington Nationals and am glad we finally have a baseball team back in D.C. I also follow the Baltimore Orioles, the Washington Wizards and the Washington Mystics. I have recently started paying some attention to the Washington Capitals.
I am also a big fan of the Washington Kastles, D.C.'s World Team Tennis franchise. They have completed four seasons in Washington DC and after attending several matches in 2008 I decided to buy season tickets for the Kastles in 2009 and renewed them in 2010 and 2011. Going to all of the tennis matches has been a blast and the Kastles did the unexpected in 2009. They managed to get into the Eastern Division playoffs against the New York Sporttimes and defeated New York in the Eastern Division Championship match and advanced to the WTT Championship finals on July 26, 2009 against the Springfield Lasers. It was even better than expected since the WTT Championship Finals were hosted by the Washington Kastles and the match was on our own home court.
The Kastles were leading the match after the Men's Singles, Men's Doubles, Mixed Doubles and Women's Doubles matches. All that was left was the Women's Singles match. The Kastles women's single specialist, Olga Puchkova was presented with a daunting task - playing against the World Team Tennis 2009 Female MVP, Vania King who was almost unbeatable all year.
With the score tied 20-20, Olga was down 4 games to 2 (5 games wins the event). Vania King went up 3-1 in the game and then had three championship points against Olga. Olga managed to fight off those championship points and break Vania's serve to bring the event score to 4-3 and the overal score to 21-20 Kastles. Olga then held serve to tie up the event 4-4 with the Kastles leading 22-20 for the match. Since the event was tied 4-4, there was a 9 point tiebreak for the 5th game. If Springfield won the tiebreak, the score would have been 22-21 and the match would have gone into overtime.
Olga dug deap and won the 9 point tiebreak giving the 2009 WTT Championship title to the Washington Kastles.
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2009 WTT Champion Washington Kastles
Leander Paes
Rennae Stubbs
Scott Oudsema
Olga Puchkova
Serena Williams
Nadia Petrova
Murphy Jensen, Coach |
The Kastles just missed the playoffs in 2010 in spite of having the WTT Male Rookie of the year, Bobby Reynolds.
The Kastles came out of the gate as hot a habanero pepper in 2011 and ending up finishing the season 14-0 - an undefeated season that had only been done once before in the 36 years of the WTT.
The Kastles then went to Championship Weekend in Charleston, SC and won the Eastern Conference Championship against the Boston Lobsters to go 15-0.
They then went into the WTT Finals against the St. Louis Aces with a chance to do something no team had ever done in the 36 years that WTT has been in existence - have a 16-0 season being undefeated through the regular season and the playoffs.
The Mixed Doubles didn't go well for the Kastles - Leander and Rennae lost that event 5-3.
But Rennae and Arina came storming back in the Women's Doubles and shutout the Aces for a 5-0 win in that event.
Leander and Bobby kept the momentum going and won the Men's Doubles event 5-2.
Arina went into the Women's Singles as the underdog against Tamira Paszek, #42 in the world and a Wimbledon quarter finalist. Arina brought her "A" game and stunned the Aces by beating Paszek in an event tiebreak. That put the Kastles up 18-11 going into the Men's Singles.
Bobby lost the Men's Singles in a tiebreak 5-4. That sent the match into overtime.
The Aces won 3 games in overtime before Bobby finally won a game on a deciding point to take the Kastles home, winning 23-19.
The Kastles go 16-0 and win the 2011 World Team Tennis Championship.
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2011 WTT Champion Washington Kastles
Leander Paes
Rennae Stubbs
Bobby Reynolds
Arina Rodionova
Serena Williams
Venus Williams
Murphy Jensen, Coach |
I have also been a fan of the Tennessee Lady Volunteers Basketball team for over 25 years. I think Pat Summitt is probably the best coach in college basketball (mens or womens) and is better than most of the NBA coaches.
I purchased a "Cool Blue" Mini Cooper Convertible in August 2004, took delivery of "Leanna" in late September and have had a blast driving this "Street Legal Go-Cart". I enjoy my "top down" days any day the weather is good enough to go "topless". I still infrequently drive my 2001 Infini I-30 - can't let her get jealous of "Leanna".
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