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Pictures | Radio | Masters Thesis: (Word) (HTML) | MTWindybits Services | Miscellaneous Links | Guest Page
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Narrative Summary (An Historic Perspective)

I. The Garden of Eden
As you can probably tell from the top line of this page, I am pretty excited about this web page creation experience. (It makes me feel a bit like God Himself might have felt on day 0.) Perhaps the best way to approach this web page thing is to just tell you a bit about myself. The rest will naturally flow from that, I hope. My name is David Glass. I was born in upper New York State, in a small city north of Albany called Troy. (Here, we have a sort-of live picture of nearby, downtown Albany from the top of a tall building.) Troy, New York is known as the "Home of Uncle Sam." While it is true that Samuel Wilson, an Army yard inspector in 1813, was born in Troy, New York, historians dispute whether he was actually the famous personage who gave rise to the lanky character that has represented American patriotism since the early 19th century. Historians dispute it. Patriotic Trojans know better: Troy, New York is the home of Uncle Sam. As I mentioned, it was also my birthplace. Following birth, I was taken to my first hometown, Cohoes, right across the Hudson River from Troy, in Albany County. Three years and a few milestones later, my baby brother was born. Due to the domestic overcrowding that his arrival caused, the four of us moved to a new home a few miles to the north. Home was to be the "oldest continuously incorporated village in the United States": Waterford, New York, in southern Saratoga County. In between annual vacation visits to Cape Cod, MA, and thirteen continuous years of education in the Waterford Schools, it was there, in eastern upstate New York, in close proximity to the Erie Canal and the Saratoga Race Track, amidst the numerous relics left from several centuries of American history, that I spent my very many formative years. (Here is a really cool US Geological Survey satellite photo of Waterford, NY, and surrounding cities.) And, for any visitors to this site who are interested in learning more about some of the kids who attended Waterford High School over the past 50 years or so, here is a REALLY WELL DONE alumni page for your enjoyment. And if you still need lots more Waterford HS nostalgia, check out my friend, Eric’s website dedicated to the WHHS choir and band. (This website even contains some really neat pictures and streaming RealAudio files containing all the musical selections we performed for a record album that we had produced in 1969. Ah… Nostalgia… This stuff will certainly “take you back”. It’s cool! Check it out!)

II. Salad Days
In retrospect, the long part of my life following graduation from Waterford-Halfmoon High School seems like a big, tossed salad, with many days and many nights, as well as a bunch of tossing. After a couple of years as an air traffic controller in the U.S. Air Force, came multiple, failed college tries at schools around Albany, New York, and numerous girlfriend- and employment-related stormy periods. (This is what we used to refer to as having an identity crisis. I had more than my share of these.) Eventually, I parlayed my excellent diction, resonant speaking voice and perverse, youthful preference for jobs offering low wages and dubious security, into a career of sorts: radio broadcasting. I chased and caught my 15 minutes of fame many times over. Being a DJ was not only tons of fun (with plenty of opportunities to meet and greet friendly listeners), but the shaky job security to which I have already alluded afforded me more than enough chances to personally try living in various parts of the United States. Thus, I experienced a little bit of life "on the road" that had been popularized a half generation before me, by Beat Generation folks like writer, Jack Kerouac. I was restless and wanted to see the world! My job venues pretty well spanned the map from Albany, Troy and Hudson in eastern New York State to places like New Iberia, Louisiana, Amarillo, Texas, and New Albany, Mississippi. I even worked for one day in Knoxville, Tennessee, and had the promise of jobs in Poultney, Vermont, Birmingham, Alabama, and Russellville, Arkansas. When I came out to Montana, I did radio shows around the state, in Great Falls and Missoula, Polson and Plentywood. To coin a phrase though, Time marches on. When the day finally comes that one can no longer pack all of his worldly possessions into his car and move a thousand miles to find a new job and a new life at a different radio station, it is time to buy a truck, to get rid of most of his worldly possessions or to rethink his life's modus operandi. Being disinclined to ditch my 1984 Tercel (or any of my other toys), I chose the latter.

III. Another Place Another MO
Rethinking the modus operandi wasn't as easy as I had thought it might be. After much inner struggle and many nights of lost sleep, I finally decided that I had put it off long enough: a college education would be the way that I would go. Mostly that was because, as a kid, I had promised myself a degree or two... someday. However, I previously had not been willing to ignore the myriad distractions that Life always seemed to dangle in my face, long enough to be able to obtain any college credits at all, despite the many times I had tried. This time was gonna be different though, especially since I would return to the one place I previously had lived that I desperately wanted to return to: Montana. There is something about the sky there that is different. (The sky in Montana really is bigger than it is anywhere else... even in Texas!) Since I had once already sampled living in central Montana (Great Falls), I chose to attend school in western Montana, at the University of Montana campus in Missoula. At the moment that my eventual direction became clear to me, I found myself living in the genteel state of Mississippi. So first, I had to untangle myself from a few of the kudzu vines that had wound their way around me, there in the Deep South. Then I headed back westwards to the Big Sky Country of Montana to begin my metamorphic adventure. Degree #1 came in 1989. It was a bachelor's in radio-TV. After a few more years in the job market, it was back to school for degree #2, a master's in computer science in 1997. Now, it has been fourteen years since it all began. Now, after more schooling than is healthy for any human, various jobs, a mid-life crisis, a ham radio license and a little lost hair, I have finally emerged from the rigor mortis of academia, a new being. These days, I live in northwest Montana and write computer programs for a stable and fairly comfortable living. In spare time, I like exploring the Internet with my computer, Montana back roads with my car and the radio bands with my tabletop receiver. And I love telling stories. Life is peaceful and good and things are finally looking up, for a well deserved change. So, what's next? Well...

For Starters... If you feel so inclined, you can check out my masters thesis. Just click on one of these two links:
An Investigation Into the Search Characteristics of Three Hillclimbing Algorithms: (MS Word or HTML)
David F. Glass, master's thesis, 1997, University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812

IV. That was Then… This is Now
It has been said that (Oooh Oooh…) Life Goes On Long After the Thrill of Living is Gone (J.C. Mellenkamp, 1978). And so it did for me, too: After a few years of peaceful and prosperous Montana living, I caught the wanderlust bug again and decided also to recapture that elusive "thrill of living". So, I obtained a little bit more training, a Montana Commercial Driver License and launched career #3: long-haul truck driving. My first trucker job right out of the box failed miserably. Could I have made an error in career judgement? (Not likely!) As it turned out, a new Horizon opened up in front of my very eyes: A company named Horizon Transport persuaded me to apply my newfound driving abilities to help them transport hundreds of motorhomes and RVs around the country. The amazing part of this was that they would pay me to do it! It seems that the market for those big expensive motorized toys is so lucrative these days that I should safely be able to maintain my gypsy lifestyle well into the forseeable (and even the unforseeable) future. I continue writing software applications in spare time, too, even while camped out in Walmart parking lots around the country. It's an interesting way to spend a few more years: living along the highways of North America. Who'd-a thunk it?

Pictures! Pictures! Pictures!
Click here to find lots of neat pictures. In fact, many of these shots will make great desktop wallpaper!

Back when radio broadcasting (career #1) was my whole life and livlihood, I recorded a few samples of my on-air work.
Click here for a page of radio samples.

If you like links like I like links then take a look at a whole bunch of my favorite links:
Click here to go to a whole page full of neat links. (BROWSE AT YOUR OWN RISK!)

Check with the famous Weather Underground to find out how it is in my world today!

(Or click here to see for yourself what it's like to be in nearby, downtown Big Fork, MT right now.)

<<-- I almost forgot... Please allow me to introduce myself... -->>
<<-- Your humble narrator... KB7ZGX -->>
<<-- (Finally, A new photo! I figgered out how to make a self portrait.) -->>

September, 2004

More Neat Stuff is Coming Soon.
This Site is always Under Construction...
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