BACK STORY

My name is Dustin, though I generally go by Dustin M., a nickname coined by one of my favourite aunts. Born in August 1973, I am an only child (my friends say it really shows, too!) and grew up in rural south-eastern Ohio. Being an only kid, and since my parent's house was sooo far out in the country, I learned to be pretty independent at a young age.

MY LATE 20'S

After dating for over four years, in 1998 I married my college sweetheart, Julie. In early 2000 we purchased our home, a wonderfully restored house that dates back to the American Civil War. Our dream house is located in the heart of quaint Scotch Ridge, a bedroom community in north-western Ohio.

The year 2002 was one of the best ... and one of the worst years of our lives. January started out good when we committed to taking a trip to Australia over the summer. In March our year took an unexpected turn into life-changing greatness when we discovered that we were pregnant! Then in  June we suffered the crushing blow of every parent-to-be's worst nightmare: two days short of her 14th week of pregnancy Julie suffered a miscarriage.  At the urging of our physician, family, and friends, rather than cancel our trip to Australia, we re-scheduled it for later that summer. With great trepidation and heavy hearts from the loss of our baby, we went to Australia and were genuinely surprised as to how much fun we had.

FATHERHOOD

While my 30th birthday was a bit less exciting than most (I had to work a twelve-hour shift), a few months later I became a dad! Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined how frightening yet wonderful it would be to become someone's father. One of the interesting side-effects of becoming a parent is that when it comes to the greater good of our family, Julie and I are suddenly able to make what would have otherwise been great personal sacrifices with nary a thought. Faced with the high cost of sending our son to a good preschool, Julie and I easily trimmed from our family budget things that would have been considered non-negotiable (satellite television, broadband internet, my gaming web site, etc.) back before we were parents. Plus to the amazement of my friends and family, I gave up my hobby of fifteen years: role-playing games. Parenthood has irrevocably changed our lives!

After a long, complicated pregnancy, in May 2005 my wife and I became parents again with the birth of our twin girls, Maggie and Zoë! Changing diapers and making bottles was old hat for us, but nothing could have prepared us for the amount of work twins are!

OUR PET MENAGERIE

As part of her first preschool classroom back in 1998, Julie had an aquarium with three mickey mouse platys. As the school was not heated during Christmas break, Julie brought the aquarium home so we could take care of the fish. After about two weeks, I was hooked and had to have an aquarium of my own! By the time we moved into our house, I had two 10-gallon tanks and one 29-gallon tank full of thriving fish colonies (we have even managed to snap a few photos of our fish). I specialize in platys (one of the species of freshwater fish that do not lay eggs but instead birth live young) and even sell my extra breeding stock to the local fish store.

A couple of months after moving into our house, early in the summer of 2000, we rescued our dog, Friday, from the local dog shelter. She is a beagle/sheltie mix and the pride and joy of our lives! In fact, she even has her own page on the internet: Friday's Family Page.

In September 2002 we got an unexpected addition to the family; one night after work while taking Friday on a walk, we discovered a half-starved kitten that someone had dropped off. Naming her Star (she is pure white with a small patch of gray hair at her crown), we took her home and have been enjoying her kitty antics ever since. Star also has her own on-line photo album.

COLLEGE

I started college at Bowling Green State University as a Heath Care Administration major, however with the down-sizing of heath care in the mid-90's (due to the Clintons and their proposed socialized heath care scheme) I realized that I would never get a job at a hospital. So the second semester of my senior year I did the un-thinkable and changed majors. Between that and the fact that I pretty much worked full time for the University's Computer Services Department during the last four years of my college career, I can honestly say that college was the best seven years of my life.  :-)

During the summer of 1997 I interned with Sassafras Software, the publisher of KeyServer, the premier solution for software license metering, and had an absolutely wonderful experience! The people there were fantastic and I really enjoyed traveling to Atlanta, Boston, and Las Vegas for the company. Not to mention the fact that I loved New England (while I worked in New Hampshire, I actually lived in Vermont)!

In May 1998 I received a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration. My major was Management Information Systems with a minor in Interpersonal Communications.

WORK

After completing my bachelors degree in May 1998, I accepted a position in the Enterprise Network Services division of Sky Bank, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Sky Financial Group. My first year at the company I worked at the Help Desk, then moved on to a Field Tech position providing second level IT support for our facilities in Wood county. During the summer of 2002 I became a team leader at the newly formed Systems Monitoring Group, where we were responsible for the monitoring and proactive maintenance of the company's ATM's, data lines, and servers. The company really hated sending me out of state for training, because every time they did, something bad happened to the United States: September 11 happened the week before I went to Chicago for ARCserve training, and the Invasion of Iraq started the week before I went to Washington D.C. for BrightStor training. I kept telling them it was just a coincidence, but my boss kept telling me I had to stay in state.  :-)

Alas all good things come to an end, and in December 2006, the CEO of Sky announced that the company was being acquired by Huntington National Bank.  Even though my entire department was eliminated, I was luckier than most and had my contract extended four times, but ultimately I was the second-to-last of the 1500 employees let go.  Since 2008 I have worked as a contractor doing IT work in the banking industry

FUN

My true hobbies include volunteering at the on-line encyclopedia Wikipedia, reading books of both science fiction (favourite authors include Robert A. Heinlein, Frank Herbert, and Arthur C. Clarke) and straight science (Jared Diamond and Tim Flannery are two favourite authors), magazines (National Geographic and Newsweek are two that I especially enjoy), playing strategy board games with my friends (I have quite the reputation when it comes to Risk, Axis & Allies, and Shogun), and -of course- my tropical fish. Other things that I really enjoy include hiking (both nature trails and the Appalation variety of mountains) and traveling (by age 29, I had already been to 30 of the U.S. states, 2 Canadian provinces, 4 Australian states, and 2 Australian territories). Additionally, over the past several years I have become a bit of an amateur photographer. However, my photography habit annoys my wife to no end, as I am always wanting to stop and take pictures when she is busy wanting to go from point A to point B.