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Boring, I know...
But required reading if you really want to know what I've been up to in my life. This is really just a way for old friends to catch up, so that I don't have to type the same thing in every email....
Any way, I was born and raised in Mansfield, Ohio, a small (50-55,000 people) industrial town located halfway between Cleveland and Columbus. All in all, not a bad place to grow up and live, as I've come to find out. I led a fairly normal, uneventful life growing up. The schools in Mansfield when I was growing up were excellent. They must have been, because I always seemed to know more than my parents. My parents, by the way, are William (Bill) and Jeanette (Flowers) Hamlin. They were married on Easter Sunday, 1953, and somehow, have managed to stay together all these years, a concept that seems to have been lost on me. I attended H.L. Creveling elementary school, John Sherman Jr. High, and finally graduated from Mansfield Sr. High in 1972. I started playing the trumpet in the 5th grade, and not very well, either, I might add. I was in the band at Sherman and Sr, High and was considered to be a band jock, I guess. I wrestled and ran track in Jr. High, and ran track in Sr. High. Some of my best friends I made in the band, as well as most of the influences and philosophies that have shaped me into the person I am today - don't worry, I don't hold any of you responsible for the way I turned out! I always did well in school, up to the point where I discovered hormones, or they discovered me, and I became more interested in the "fairer sex" than learning. After that, I simply got by. I believe I was ranked like 112 out of 415. It could have been a lot better, if only I had applied myself. Ahhh, the lament of old age. Kids, pay attention. I worked summers "picking worms" (night crawlers - for a bait business), for Private Carriage Engineering (Westinghouse Trucking) cleaning and painting semi tractors and trailers, and then landed at Miller's Meats washing dishes. I eventually worked my way up to "head patty popper" and was involved in all aspects of the wholesale meat business, including driving truck, supplying local restaurants and schools, as well as the Clancy's hamburger chain all over the state of Ohio. I stayed there for a couple of years after school, because I was making good money (with the overtime), and hey!, why go to college if I'm making good money? I got a wild hair one day and quit that job, and went to work at Ray's Sunoco pumping gas and fixing tires for another couple of years. After sweating my ass off in the summer, and freezing in the winter, and the only other alternatives seeming to be factory jobs, I decided Mansfield might not be the place for me. At least for a while. Sooooo.....
Note: this is not the Village People version.... At the tender age of 22, and after 5 years of doing nothing with my life, I decided to "join the Navy, and see the world". My father was also in the Navy. I think the Saturday Night Live rendition of "the Navy, it's not just a job, it's an adventure...Port of call: Bayonne, New Jersey" was closer to the truth. If you have ever been to Bayonne, that part of the skit hit the nail right on the head. But I have to say, I did see a good part of the world. I spent a great year in San Diego going to school, I was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, for another 2 years, and then spent the rest of 6 years floating around the Mediterranean and Indian Oceans aboard the USNS Rigel Mississenewa, and Pawcatuck. If you had to go to sea in the Navy, USNS was the way to go. The Rigel was my "home" ship, and I did temporary duty aboard the others as a teletype repairman. I got out of the Navy as a Radioman 1st Class. It was while serving at NTCC Hampton Roads that I was introduced to computers. I will never forget it. The Chief took me into a room and said, "This is our computer. You are going to run it". I was scared shitless. The whole ROOM was filled with the computer, and it was a huge room. After the initial fear wore off, I said hey, this is pretty easy, maybe I'll stick with this. Oh, silly boy... While doing my sea duty, and I know, most sailors don't consider USNS ships sea duty, I went to Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Israel, Beirut Lebanon, Oman, Diego Garcia, Singapore, Australia, and the Philippines.
I got out of the Navy in late 1982, and moved to Puerto Rico to be with my wife of one year. No, she wasn't Puerto Rican, she was from South Carolina, which is almost the same. She had worked with me while stationed in Norfolk. The plan was for me to go to school while she finished her enlistment. Well, my daughter Marjory must not have liked that plan, because it was right around that time that she decided to make her presence known. So, I moved back to Norfolk, and got a job as a computer operator at the local Navy communications stations, and set up a house for the family. My wife joined me in August, and Marjory joined us in October. The Navy couldn't see fit to making me a permanent employee because I wasn't qualified enough for the job. Oh, did I mention that they wanted me to train their personnel that had permanent status? Hmmm. Anyway, I found a job in Cheltenham, Md., working for the Navy as a contractor doing software testing for their communications systems. We packed up and moved up the coast in September of 1984. And it was just before the insurance for this job kicked in, that my son Andrew decided to tell us he was going to be in the family. He was born the following spring, in May of 1985.
Sort
of after
the Navy... I also worked part time on and off for eight years at District ServiStar Hardware, now TrueValue Hardware on 17th . The store is located in DuPont Circle, which if you don't know anything about DC, is the central hub of the gay community...not that there's anything wrong with that! Always interesting there. At one time, I also tried teaching music, but I had to give it up. I just didn't have the fortitude to endure. While living in the "Baltimore-Washington Metro Area", I lived in LaPlata, Md., Accokeek, Md., Waldorf, Md., and lastly, in Laurel, Md. Since both of my jobs were in the city, and Laurel is about a 35-50 minute commute, I always toyed with the idea of selling the house and moving to DuPont Circle. I figured that I wouldn't have many friends in the area, but I'd have neighbors up the ass!
Around Christmas time of 1999, I started considering a move back to Ohio. I missed it. Of all the places I have lived, I feel like it is the best. Despite the cosmopolitan thinking around the DC area, I think Ohio is further ahead in so many areas. I couldn't get cable there until 1990, for Christ's sake! Add into the equation the fact that I was going through my second divorce (see, I told you my parent's ethos had escaped me), and that I had no family in the area, and it became a no brainer. So, at Christmas of 2000, I packed up the dog and moved to Delaware, Ohio. Delaware is a beautiful little town about 30 minutes from Columbus. I liked it there a lot. The only problem I had was that I forgot to secure a decent job with a company run by someone with some kind of ethics. Beings as my Java skills are less than stellar, and there isn't the hue and cry for Delphi programmers that there is for Visual C++ and Visual Basic, I found myself still searching for a job, until
I landed (actually, someone did me a favor) a job with Cole, Layer & Trumble, out of Dayton, Ohio, doing contract work in of all places, where else? The bad penny returns to good old Mansfield! I am still trying to wangle my way into the software end of it, but for now, I am the group leader in charge of an office doing image collection of every parcel in Richland County. Talk about a good way to get reacquainted with the place! It has been very interesting, and I get to see where all of my old friends live now.
Now seriously, if I could tell the future, do you think I'd be wasting my time doing this? I'd be out getting my Power Ball numbers for the next drawing!
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