|
Mike's Bio Page |
||||
| Grew up in Queens, N.Y.C. | (Floral Park, near Glen Oaks) | Introduced to American Museum of Natural History (One of my favorite places in the world) at age of 9 by Grandma Yanega. | ||
| Awarded Art Medal at Junior High Graduation. | Neighborhood storyteller with tales of Yanegania, The Rockaway Monsters, and the Flying Machine. |
Played Nok-Hockey, Risk, Hollywood Go, Careers, Star Reporter and stoop ball. |
||
| Was an ardent Milwaukee Braves fan until the Mets came to town. | Studied Architecture at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, N.Y. (for one year) |
Graduated from Pratt Institute School of Engineering with B.S.E.E. degree.(January 1967) |
||
| Married Denise in 1967. (Best thing I ever did.) |
Worked for over 3 years at Cape Canaveral on Minuteman and Saturn/Apollo for Boeing. (Saw all the Apollo launches through Apollo 13 in 1970) |
Son Greg born in Florida, a few days before Apollo 13 launch. | ||
| Transferred to Seattle and worked 8 more years on Minuteman. Won Boeing Missiles & Space Group Engineer of the Year in 1976. (Same year Denise's soccer team won Washington State Championship.) | Daughter Tanya born in Seattle. | Transferred to Boeing Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) program in 1978 as Software Requirements (and later Design) Lead. IUS put up many payloads, including Magellan, Galileo, and Ulysses planetary spacecraft while I worked there. Helped software group reach SEI Level Five rating in 1996. (Only third organization ever to reach Level Five.) | ||
| Got my first Atari computer in 1982. Became hooked on fonts, designing my own fonts for dot matrix printer. | Got my first Macintosh and laser printer in 1993. Began my font collection with Letterpress CD from Image Club. | Got our first beagle, Shelby in Sept 1995 . Second beagle Toby rescued in October 1996. | ||
| Formally licensed
Bowfin Printworks in October 1997. (Not much more than a P.O.
Box and a daydream.)
Got my second Macintosh in 1998 and first inkjet printer. |
Retired from Boeing at the end of March 1999, after more than 32 years. Came back as retiree to work on Chandra flight as my last IUS flight supported. |
Started new "career" as volunteer expert at AllExperts.com, answering questions in U.S. & European History, Zoology and Paleontology. (December 1999) |
||
|
Registered domain name of bowfinprintworks.com in June 2000. First version of Bowfin Printworks home page late in same month. |
In 2001 Bowfin Printworks Custom Spice Labels are starting to attract customers. Soon they become my most popular product. CasualCards only sell a few sets each year. (So much for what I thought would be my best-seller!) Occasional graphics design projects add some spice to the jobs I get. |
In March 2001, I began participating in the comp.fonts and alt.binaries.fonts newsgroups. In June the Bauhaus-style Font ID Guide is created; in September work starts on the Script Font ID Guide, with help from newsgroup community. Sans Serif Font ID Aid/Guide started in early 2002.
|
||
| In June 2002 Denise retires too.
Bowfin Printworks is now offering free font identification service, since I have so much fun with that part of the newsgroup participation. I get 5 -10 direct ID requests each day, keeping me busy between customers. |
In August 2002, I set up a Bowfin Support page to look for Bowfin Donors to help support my website and font ID work. This starts to help fill in where the sales fall short. The response is pretty gratifying, mostly from graphic artists who got help finding clients' typefaces. | We added Maggie, a golden retriever, to our family in February 2003.
In August 2003, I begin participating in the Type Identification Board forum at Typophile.com. Preliminary work starts in October on the Serif Font ID Guide. It will use a key letter/style code scheme similar to the Sans ID Guide. |
||
|
|
Who knows? | |||
|
Date of this page: 14 Oct 2003
|
||||
|
|
||||