Model Railroading
In my childhood I had an American Flier train set that was put up for Christmas. Over the years I moved into the HO scale model trains and had a fairly elaborate setup. When time became scarce because of college and managing the family farm and getting married I put the trains away. In 2006 for Christmas my daughters and my wife thought it would be a great Christmas gift to get my old trains out, set them up and rekindle the entheausiam I had in model railroading as a kid. Well, it did and now I am studying the model railroad industry and catching up on all the advancement over the last 30 years. I am designing a new layout and gather supplies and materials with hope of begin construction a new layout in the near future. Model railroading takes into account many skills from the design process to carpentry to electrical and electronics.
Web Site Design
I began doing web site design and coding as a hobby and in general interests. I thought about creating a web site for my self but wondered what for, who would look at it. I, like so many others surfed the web to see what was out there and how things were done. Many fancy sites and complicated ones. I realized that the simple sites were really the best because they were the most useful. I created some sites for friends that were elaborate and with the Internet of selling things, but they did not really sell anything. I came to the conclusion that e-marketing was so competitive and so dominated that the real power of the internet was information. So I dabble in web design here and there but primarily do it as consultant and advisor now.
Computer Programming
In college I was exposed to several computer languages especially basic and fortran. Well fortran is gone but basic as really evolved and has fascinated me. I created a couple of small programs in the past and in 2005 I created one in particular that was most impressive called a Cruise Clock. The idea was that when you turn on your computer a small program came up that told you how long you had in days hours minutes and seconds until you departed for a cruise. I did this for my wife. Since we have not been on a cruise since then I let the program go. Recently while attempting to reactivate the program I realized there have been changes with Visual Basic that made my software out of date, so I decided to update the software and working on that as time permits even though there are apps that can do this easily now.
Authoring Books
I have written and published two science fiction novels with a third in progress and expected out by the fall of 2019. I have ideas for writing two more science fiction book and perhaps one or two religiously oriented books. I enjoy writing and I have been told my writing kills are very good. Please look up my books at Primus-One