Since the last entry here I quit medicine, worked seven years in two parks as a Florida State Park Ranger, and now I'm retired living life the way I want. You can follow my current life at my blog rangersteve.com.
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Hanging Up The Stethoscope |
OK, bridge burned...my planned retirement became a front page story in the Key West Citizen on June 20, loosely related to series of articles on the problems with health care in the Keys. This began with a story they published about a Key West resident that was sent to Miami in the hope Dade county would pay for an expensive operation. I wrote a letter to the editor, which they decided should be run as a guest column. They were interested by a comment in there that my retirement is imminent, so they sent a reporter to get the story.
In a town famous for people that have dropped out of the rat race, I'm not sure if I should be proud or scared that my story is newsworthy!
A Flash slideshow of the best of my pictures from this year's Marathon Offshore Grand Prix and Bridge Bash (the latter a two night concert featuring Rick Derringer, Edgar Winter, and 38 Special). Full proof sheets are up at www.RocDocPhoto.com.
See some pics and a movie of Jimmy Buffett dropping in on the Deanna Bogart Band.
I had a wonderful time on my annual road trip! I've posted pictures from Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Great Basin National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Canyonlands National Park, North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest National Park, White Sands National Monument, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, and Big Bend National Park.
Back in my medical school days, I spent quite a bit of time avoiding the books by taking pictures. I had not used my old Canon A-1 in quite a while, instead using a succession of digital point and shoot cameras, but while scanning in my slides from those days I realized how much I missed the control of a real camera. I'm back into photography in a big way, even getting some paying gigs. I now have a Canon EOS 10D and 20D digital bodies, an EOS-3 film body, and a nice bunch of lenses.
Visit my photo pages for some of my favorite images.
My undergraduate degree was in computer science (BS 1980 Pepperine University Malibu),and I programmed for Hughes Aircraft as a Member of the Technical Staff before entering medical school (MD 1984 UC San Diego). I bought my Apple ][ (s/n 15,132) September 14, 1978. Just two weeks after its 20th birthday, it got submerged in the storm surge from Hurricane Georges. I cleaned it off and sprayed the insides with WD-40 so it still looks good, but it will never run again :-( RIP old friend... I've been an avid Macintosh fan since I first saw the it, a few months before it was released. Besides the Apple ][, my museum of computing includes many other macs accumulated over the years. This server is a Dell 2650, dual 2.8 GHz Xeon processors, 2x72 GB SCSI, and 3 GB RAM running Red Hat Enterprise Linux at a donated co-location site. It is the only non-Macintosh machine I use.
I've been a ham for 16 years or so, holding an Extra class license for most of that time. Presently I spend most of my ham radio time on packet radio, specifically on APRS (Automatic Position Reporting System). You can use the software I've written to see where I am now.
Listen to my interview
on the radio program "RAIN Report" April 98.
I've played guitar since I was 8. I've been in a few loose bands over the years, but my work schedule makes it too tough to play in a band now. Besdies, I've found a better way to put my meager musical talent to work. Find a real talent, and let them do all the work!
In 2000 I had the pleasure to produce a live album by a good friend of mine, Deanna Bogart and her band. They play their own unique blend of blues, rock, jazz, country, and boogie woogie. Last year I was executive producer on her latest (and best) studio album, " Timing is Everything". You've never heard anything like the Deanna Bogart Band! You can buy the live album here! As good as the albums are (a completely unbiased opinion ;-) you have to see them play live.
I maintain a small fleet of boats to satisfy my craving for the water. For those who don't know, South Florida, and especially the Florida Keys have the best boating in the continental US...the water is warm, clear and clean. I have a house on Cudjoe Key, about 20 miles from Key West. Did I mention I love toys?
This is my only active project currently, a huge database (over 76 GB) of position and weather reports, messages, telemetry, and other data from the APRS system. This system gets more than 17 million hits every month, an incredible number for an amateur radio related system.
Over the last couple years, the system has begun to gather me a few awards...they say once you start getting awards your best work is over, sure hope that isn't the case in my life!
Grand Prize winner, Earthlink AVL competition
NOAA Environmental Hero Award
Another NOAA press release
Hamvention Award For Technical Excellence
