Places I’ve Lived…

I began my life as a “Navy Brat” as such, my family moved every few years… later I too spent six years in the Navy prior to settling down in the Chicago area for school and work… here’s a history of my journeys.

  • Rice Lake, WI
  • Pensacola, FL
  • Todendorf, Germany (03/1974 – 03/1976)
  • Ft. Meade, MD (1976-1979)
  • Adak, AK (1979 – 1982)
  • Winter Harbor, ME (1982-1985)
  • Adak, AK (“again!” 1985-1988)
  • Rice Lake, WI (August 1988- July 1989)
  • “Boot Camp” Great Lakes, IL (July – Sept. 1989)
  • Groton, CT (Oct. 1989 – Dec. 1990)
  • Pearl Harbor, HI (Jan. 1991- July 1995) – onboard SSN-725
  • Rice Lake, WI (July 1995- Oct. 1995) – mostly traveling.
  • Glendale Heights, IL (Oct. 1995-1996)
  • Palatine, IL (1996-1997)
  • Wood Dale, IL (1997-1998)
  • Carol Stream, IL (2000-November 2007)
  • Plainfield, IL (November 2007-present)

Alpine Slide

After hearing about this for years, I finally got to try this exciting event/sport. The closest location to Chicago that I can locate is at Chestnut Mountain in Galena, IL (apx. 3 hrs away on the Iowa border). While it’s advertised as “safe for the entire family”, it’s VERY easy to get carried away and get hurt…. i left some ‘skin’ on the ramp myself, leading to some ugly “road rash” on my arms 🙂

Check it out…

http://www.chestnutmtn.com/summer/

CSS2 Colors

CSS Level 2 defines several additional color names that represent the special system-specific colors used by the operating system. These names should look look very familiar to prior developers of “Fat Client” software, primarily VisualBASIC and PowerBuilder.

NOTE: These work with MSIE 5.0+ and Mozilla/Netscape 5.0+, prior browsers “try” to interpret these colors as hexadecimal RGB (Red/Green/Blue) equivalents, resulting in a huge mess.

The colors shown below will be mapped from your current operating system settings and as such MAY vary from computer to computer!

CSS 2 Color Name Example (Using Background-color) Description
ActiveBorder Active window border.
ActiveCaption Active window caption.
AppWorkspace Background color of multiple document interface.
Background Desktop background.
ButtonFace Face color for three-dimensional display elements.
ButtonHighlight Dark shadow for three-dimensional display elements (for edges facing away from the light source).
ButtonShadow Shadow color for three-dimensional display elements.
ButtonText Text on push buttons.
CaptionText Text in caption, size box, and scrollbar arrow box.
GrayText Grayed (disabled) text. This color is set to #000 if the current display driver does not support a solid gray color.
Highlight Item(s) selected in a control.
HighlightText Text of item(s) selected in a control.
InactiveBorder Inactive window border.
InactiveCaption Inactive window caption.
InactiveCaptionText Color of text in an inactive caption.
InfoBackground Background color for tooltip controls.
InfoText Text color for tooltip controls.
Menu Menu background.
MenuText Text in menus.
Scrollbar Scroll bar gray area.
ThreeDDarkShadow Dark shadow for three-dimensional display elements.
ThreeDFace Face color for three-dimensional display elements.
ThreeDHighlight Highlight color for three-dimensional display elements.
ThreeDLightShadow Light color for three-dimensional display elements (for edges facing the light source).
ThreeDShadow Dark shadow for three-dimensional display elements.
Window Window background.
WindowFrame Window frame.
WindowText Text in windows.

Cheers!

USS Helena (SSN-725)

I should add that I spent about 4.5 years of my life (from 1990-1995) living on a submarine. The ‘boat’ was stationed in Pearl Harbor, HI at that time and made several deployments in the Pacific Ocean. For you bubble-heads, it consisted of one NORPAC, two WESTPAC (the second one incuded some time in the Persian Gulf), and several EASTPAC deployments.
More information can be found here… http://www.skotfred.com/ssn725.php

I’ve made port calls in the following places…

  • San Diego, CA (Point Loma)
  • Bangor/Bremerton, WA
  • Victoria/Esquimalt, BC Canada
  • Nanoose, BC Canada
  • Guam
  • Yokosuka, Japan (south of Tokyo)
  • Sasebo, Japan (north of Nagasaki)
  • Chinhae, Korea
  • Pattaya Beach, Thailand
  • Singapore
  • Bahrain
  • Abu Dhabi, UAE
  • Dubai
  • Darwin, NT Australia