About Me

Watching Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation as a 7 year old kid, I was inspired by the intrepid crews of the U.S.S. Enterprise 1701 and 1701-D traveling among the stars and meeting alien civilizations. The stories told in those Star Trek episodes told stories that had important moral lessons, and as a kid, I took them to heart and still apply those same moral lessons learned to my everyday living. 

Being implanted with the cochlear implant from a young age, I could relate to Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation in his everlasting quest to become a human. My life journey closely parallels that of Data. He did indeed find his humanity, but not in the manner in which one might expect. He is implanted with the emotion chip and human flesh in the TNG movies to be as close as possible to a human, but in the end, he rejects both and embraces his android nature as part pf his identity, just like I rejected the cochlear implant and my hearing identity at age 21 and fully embraced my Deaf identity along with acquiring my natural language of ASL under the guidance of my wife, Andrea. 

I completed my Associate of Arts degree at Clark College, my Bachelor of Arts degree in Elementary Education at Washington State University, and my Masters of Science degree in Elementary Education at McDaniel College. I'm an elementary teacher of the Deaf at Washington School for the Deaf. Teaching the next generation of Deaf students is a job I take to heart, and I'm honored to serve the Deaf community as a teacher who himself is Deaf and shares in the language of the Deaf. 

I learned how to build computers when I was 11 years old. My first build was a 286x that I built out of scrap parts from a box pf parts given to me by my uncle, who worked in IT at a 911 call center. It ran Windows 3.1.  From there, my interest in computers took off, and I've been building computers since. The computer I'm typing this on is one I custom built in 2014- still going strong after 12 years. When it comes to building computers, I focus on quality motherboard and power supply units, NOT the fastest processor or ram as conventional wisdom would dictate. I prefer a stable platform, and that is what a quality power supply + motherboard provides. 

Given my background experience of building computers, I decided to try building a telescope. I did some reading, and read about a mirror maker named Steve Swayze who makes mirrors. His mirrors are well regarded and considered some of the finest mirrors in this country. It also so happened that he lived locally, in Portland Oregon. Steve helped me grind, polish, and figure the mirror for my first telescope, the 10" f/5.6 Gustav IV, named after my son. You can read about that build on this website, along with my other builds. I remember bringing the 10" home every weekend from his shop to polish, polish, polish, and polish it. My wife helped polish it too. 

Since that project, I've gone on to complete a 17.5" build, a 24" build, and other projects. I'll add more telescope projects here as I start and build them. 

These days, I enjoy observing astronomical phenomena thousands of light years distant in my scopes, with high-end eyepieces. I also enjoy working on wood-making projects and computers. I also enjoy camping all over the Pacific Northwest with my wife and our 3 children in our 5th wheel.