Where to start? I recently turned 61 and have been an observer since I was about 11. I grew up in West Texas (Crane) in the middle of the oilfields, where the summer nights were so clear (except for the oilfield flares!) you could read by the light of the Milky Way. I lived within about a 90-minute drive of McDonald Observatory and visited there many times until I went off to college. I attended a National Science Foundation Summer Institute in Astronomy and Space Sciences at what was then Pan American College, under Paul Engle, who was a well-known planetarium director. I spent four years in the Marine Corps (1966 to 1970), then returned to Texas to finish college at UT El Paso (majored in journalism, with minors in English and engineering). I spent several years as a daily newspaper reporter and editor, finishing at The San Angelo Standard-Times in 1980 and joining Texas Instruments as a technical writer later that year. After a 20-year career in robotics, information science, and application development management, I helped found Internet software startup ChipData (hence my screen name). Since 2004 I have been self-employed as an IT consultant and pretty much a full-time astronomer. I began volunteer work with the Texas Astronomical Society of Dallas in 2000 and The Three Rivers Foundation for the Arts & Sciences (for whom I now work as Director of Astronomy) the following year. I was co-chair of ALCon 2006, the annual Astronomical League Convention, and am a member of The Meteoritical Society. Visit my Flickr! astrophoto album at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chipdatajeffb/ and our Three Rivers Foundation for the Arts & Sciences website: www.3rf.org.

Community Info Member since:   07-16-2002 Last visited:   11-07-2009 Timezone:   -6.00 GMT Total Posts:   8,957 Post Rank:   1

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Additional Info Location: Dallas area, Texas Occupation: Project Manager, Data Modeling Architect Interests: Astronomy, writing, cycling

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