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Welcome to Ed's Home Page
Last updated on 05 FEB 2012
Welcome to my website. It's gradually being fine-tuned, the operative word being "gradually".
ABOUT ME
There isn't a whole awful lot to say about me. I was born a Coast Guard brat in Coos Bay, Oregon and traveled around the country on a rather frequent basis; during my third grade year alone, I attended four different elementary schools in three cities and two states.
In high school, I displayed the usual assortment of diverse interests:
Freshman Year -- Soccer; Track; Foreign Language Club
Sophomore Year -- FFA; Homecoming Float Committee
Junior Year -- Basketball (I have no idea why, since I have absolutely no aptitude for the sport...); School Newspaper; Computer Club; Foreign Language Club (again)
Senior Year -- School Literary Magazine; Computer Club; Who's Who Among American High School Students
Following high school I did a hitch in the Coast Guard, then went to college where I majored in Electrical Engineering and minored in Military Science. After that, I simply traveled for a few years before starting a family.
These days, I work full-time and try to fend off my teenage daughter's would-be suitors. I still play role-playing games, do some wargaming when I have the chance, and have a membership in the Society for Creative Anachronism. I also study Emergency Management in my spare time.
Following my discovery of them during my Freshman year of high school, role-playing games quickly became my all-time favorite hobby.
RANDOM SCRIBBLINGS
I like to write, although my scribblings tend to be mere fragments rather than complete stories. However, I have also written several other, longer stories that I would one day like to publish. The titles so far, in rough chronological order, are:
The Adventures of the Polish Royal Ninjas -- A series of short stories based loosely upon the Three Musketeers-like misadventures of me and my friends during college. The stories center mainly around Porthos, a swashbuckling magician and prankster who has a running feud with the head of campus security.
The Polish Royal Ninjas Ride Again -- After graduation, the Ninjas are reunited in order to take on corporate ne'er-do-wells.
The Adventures of Sammy Bear and His Friends -- Kylie, the daughter of Porthos, has a beloved teddy bear that is more than it seems.
The Conjurer's Daughter -- Kylie is in high school and is now having adventures herself.
Bluejeans and Broadswords -- Much to her annoyance, Kylie's adventures continue while she is in college.
Porthos and the Forbidden City -- Now middle-aged and beginning to slow down a bit, Porthos finds himself in Portland investigating the disappearance of the coworker of an old friend.
The Mortlake Codex -- Not part of the above stories, but rather an adventure that I originally wrote for my long-running GURPS campaign.
The Lazarus Gauntlet -- Another RPG adventure, this one set in the world of Steve Jackson Games' Car Wars. The President of the United States has been assassinated, and a mercenary is hired to escort his only surviving clone from Kansas to Washington DC.
I also take part in the annual National Novel Writer's Month competition, which runs from 01 NOV to 30 NOV. The goal is 50,000 words in 30 days.
MY MUSIC COLLECTION
I'm not really into music; my "collection" is really just an eclectic mix of cassettes, CDs, MP3s, and even a handful of old 45 rpm records that I have acquired over the past 15+ years and stored in a large plastic box. Much of my collection is Classical or Jazz, but if you rummage around long enough you can find almost anything from Muskrat Love to Pinball Wizard to Hell's Bells. I do have a few favorites that I try to collect when I can afford to do so, however, including Meatloaf (Bat out of Hell, Bat out of Hell II and Bat out of Hell III), Queen (Classic Queen, Queen's Greatest Hits, A Kind of Magic, and All That Jazz), and Manowar (Kings of Metal and Hail to England).
MY LIBRARY
To say that I have diverse reading interests would be to say that a tiger is just a big cat or a Corvette Stingray is a car; it is EXTREME understatement, as revealed by the fact that my bookshelves appear to have everything from Planet X (a Star Trek/Marvel Comics crossover) by Michael Jan Friedman to The International Cheese Recipe Book by Evor Parry to Ether-Technology: A Rational Approach to Gravity Control by Rho Sigma.
Among my favorites books:
The Deathlands series by "James Axler" (the pen name of the late Laurence James and currently used to continue the series by other authors) deals with a savage North America a century after World War III. It can get a bit graphic at times, but is a good read. There is currently a second series, Outlanders, that is set a century after the events chronicaled in Deathlands. Axler also wrote the Earthblood trilogy; somewhere in one of my filing cabinets is a manila folder containing several pages of notes for using this setting as background for a GURPS: Survivors campaign I was once planning on running.
The Wingman series by Mack Maloney chronicals the adventures of a USAF Thunderbird pilot following the balkanization of America in the aftermath of WWIII. The first several books in the series are pretty good, but I thought that it got kind of wierd towards the end. However, I enjoyed it enough that I've always considered it to be an interesting setting for an alternate Twilight:2000 campaign, and so it has earned it's own (thicker) manila folder in the filing cabinet.
Dreampark and its sequels (The Barsoom Project and The California Voodoo Game) by Larry Niven and Steve Barnes are actually mysteries backdropped by a high-tech amusement park that combines Live Action Role Playing with holographic and virtual reality technology. The fictional "International Fantasy Gaming Society" inspired the creation of the real IFGS in the late 1980's. I've played in a few IFGS live-action games; they are a lot of fun.
The Castaways in Time series by the late Robert Adams (better known for his Horseclans series) deals with a group of 20th Century Americans who have accidently been sent back in time to an alternate Britain where Arthur III is King. It took me a while, but at long last I have FINALLY managed to acquire all six books in the series. To be honest, I think the series got kind of strange towards the end...but that in no way diminishes my enjoyment of it.
The General series by David Drake and S.M.Sterling. Imagine the life of the Roman general Belisarius if he lived on a colonized planet that had reverted to 19th Century technology. Now give him a telepathic link to an AI battle computer...
The authors have written a couple of sequels to the series: The Chosen, where the technology level is roughly equivalent to that from WWI to early WWII, and The Reformer which sets the tech level about equal to that of the Romans.
Of course, if you like "The General", then you would LOVE the Belisarius series by David Drake and Eric Flint. This time, an alternate-historical Belisarius and a futuristic computer gem are fighting an evil empire forming in India. The first three books ("An Oblique Approach", "In the Heart of Darkness", and "Destiny's Shield") can be read for free at the Baen Free Library; the next two in the series ("Fortune's Stroke" and "The Tide of Victory") are not, but are great reads anyway. The last book in the series (that I am aware of, anyway) is "The Dance of Time", but I have not yet encountered it.
Having spent my "formative years" (age 17 to 19) enlisted in the United States Coast Guard, I got a real kick out of The Nantucket Trilogy by S.M.Sterling. A most excellent series, in my opinion, about the island of Nantucket and the USCGC Eagle time-warped back to the Bronze Age. I was slightly disappointed by the way the trilogy ended, however.
Way back in 1987, Mary Monica Pulver wrote Murder at the War (now available in paperback as Knight Fall), a murder mystery set at Pennsic, an annual "war" in Pennsylvania that is considered by many to be the ultimate event within the Society for Creative Anachronism. Pennsic really has to be seen to be believed; at the time the book was written, it lasted around three days. Someone told me that Pennsic 2000 ran for something like 2 weeks.
FAVORITE MOVIES
The Lord of the Rings -- What else is there to say?
Raiders of the Lost Ark -- For a long time (more than 15 years), this was my all-time favorite movie; not only have I worn out no fewer than five copies of it on VHS video cassette, but somewhere I also have it on a Beta cassette as well as on a laser disc.
The Net -- My favorite computer movie. Running a close second is Sneakers, followed (more or less in order) by Anti-Trust, Swordfish, Hackers, War Games, and Tron.
Necessary Roughness -- I don't usually go in for sports movies, but I really like this one. Other favorite sports movies include Wildcats, Major League, and Amazing Grace and Chuck.
Red Dawn -- My entire Coast Guard Basic Training Company (QMC Elliott's Victor-118, Summer 1984) went to this en mass during our Liberty Weekend. We all came back from Liberty as super-patriots, a feeling that took nearly two days to wear off. I also watched Ghostbusters, Condorman, and Yentl (don't ask) the same weekend.
FAVORITE TELEVISION SHOWS
Thundarr the Barbarian -- So what if it was a cartoon...it was one of the greatest adventure shows ever! Someday, I would like to have all of the episodes on (preferably digital) video.
Superfriends -- OK, so another cartoon tops my list. This was kind of cheesy at times, but I still watch it on a regular basis. It's another show I want to get on video someday.
I make something of a hobby out of tracking television spin-offs and cross-overs. My all-time favorite is in an episode of Nash Bridges, where Tony B makes a reference to a book written by "Murray Bozinsky" (a Riptide character). Since Thom Bray (who played Bozinsky) also wrote that particular episode, it is certainly possible.
THE NORTHWIND
The USCGC Northwind (WAGB-282) was my first ocean-going ship in the Coast Guard, under Captain William Caster. I turned 18 while on board, just a few days too late to vote in the '84 Presidential Elections. I made some good friends, a handful of which I still keep in touch with after all these years.
For decades, the "Red Lady" found herself dealing with everything from Operation High Jump (Admiral Byrd's exploration of Antarctica) to a stolen totempole to Caribbean drug patrol to transporting musk oxen. She eventually decommissioned and later dismantled at a shipbreakers in Texas.