Yes this is a weird pic...I was mixing mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving when someone caught me off guard. You don't think I'd pose with potatoes on purpose, do you? Maybe I would.Click the pic to make it bigger.

What About Bob..........

I'm a 25 year old male living in Northern-Central New Jersey.
My life in a nutshell....leisure activities and mini casual resume'.

Latest News::

12/25/2001... I got engaged today.. yeah, it's the girl below.

11/4/2001... I just passed the PADI Open Water SCUBA diving certification check-out dive. WOO HOO!
11/2/2001...I just got my motorcycle license.. watch out!!
7/2001... I'm getting braces to straighten out my busted teeth....

This is my fiancee...


Leisure

I don't have any one hobby that occupies all my time. I like to do many things but never want to fall into a routine. I would rather try something new, give it my all, and move on to something even more exciting.
SCUBA

I have no idea why I got into this. Somehow I stumbled onto the Rutgers SCUBA instruction page and saw that the clases were starting. I thought, $250 to be certified? Why not. Well, a few months and $1500 worth of gear later, I'm really into the hobby. The pic is from a recent business trip where I managed to get a dive in.... Gulf of Mexico off St. Petersburg, FL coast. More can be seen here.

MUSIC

...I started playing Saxophone in 4th grade and continued to play until high school. I decided to quit because I felt that I never took it serious enough to be that good. I also found myself turning my efforts towards learning to play drums. I've played the drums since I was 15 or so and have been in and out of bands ever since. My first semi-successful project was with an original hardcore band named Backlash, later called Flatlined. We weren't the best band around, but played a few large venues, won a battle of the bands, as well as local talent show. Not too bad for a bunch of 16 year olds.A few years ago I was a memeber of a local area coverband called The Goodfellas/The Wize Gize and eventually renamed it Spincycle when we decided to relinquish Mafia overtones. I'm not even Italian :-) I recently decided to give rock a rest and play some funk and R & B in a new coverband project called The Vibe. You can find out all about it at www.thevibeonline.com

My musical tastes are really too quirky and eclectic to explain. I listen to new music like Blink182, Korn, Incubus, and other hard poprock. I also like 80's rock and pop as well as classic rock. Once in a while I also listen to modern jazz and bubblegum hip-hop and pop. While my taste varies, there's usually a time I can't stand to listen to certain things. I guess it depends on mood. I like my music loud and clear which is why I've always had high-end audio systems around me
MOVIES

There are also times I feel like doing little more than nothing which may include watching my favorite movies on the couch, especially with someone who may be discovering that great movie for the first time. I love quotable comedies both raunchy and sophisticated like American Pie, American Beauty, Office Space, and the original Kevin Smith trilogy before that piece of shit "Dogma" hit the screen. I also enjoy hard-hitting dramas like Goodfellas,Casino, American History X, etc,. I can't forget about the great Sci-Fi genre either. Movies like Aliens, The Thing, The Matrix, etc are all reasons I needed a hometheater system. My feeling is, if the movie ends and you haven't been moved, you've just wasted 2 hours. A good comedy should have you laughing out loud a week later while just thinking about the movie.
BOWLING

Since the summer of 1999 I've been bowling weekly in a league and consider it both a rewarding and torturous competitive sport. You just have those nights where you bowl a 95 or a 225 when you're usually consistant at 160. If you care to see it, here is the page of standings in my current league, Otto Schreodel. Look for the team named "One Game Wonder".
OUTDOORS/TRAVEL

I like driving places that may include the NJ shore or up into Bear Mountain NY for some natural beauty overlooking the Hudson River. I also like camping (click here for camping pics), hiking, boating, or bike riding to get a piece of the outdoors. I like to travel when time permits and have seen some cool places both on business and vacations with family or friends. My latest trip has been to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.(click here for those pics). I've also been to San Diego and San Francisco, CA; Baton Rouge/New Orleans, LA; Paradise Island, Bahamas twice...once cruised there; and Orlando, FL of course. I'd love to see the rest of the states as well as parts of Europe sometime soon.
PETS

No, you won't find any shedding mongrals in my house. I'm strickly an aquarium guy in that respect. It's not like it's any more "low maintenance" but at least the mess isn't spread all over the house. Here's a whole section devoted to the aquatic creatures...Bobsreef.isonfire.com
I could just keep typing, but I think I'll leave you with my mini resume below...

Education


Linden High School, Linden, NJ: Fall 1989 - Spring 1994
DeVry Technical Institute, Woodbridge, NJ: Summer 1994 - Winter 1996

I somehow pulled off a full scholarship and graduated the Electronics Technician program with a 3.87 GPA (yes I'd like a doggie biscuit please :-)

Thomas Edison State College, Trenton, NJ: Spring 1996 - present
No one has ever heard of this school. Honestly I didn't either until I found out that they are one of the only schools that will take a substantial amount of DeVry's credits. I'm currently a few credits short of a Bachelor of Science degree in Electronics Engineering. I've been taking courses at Middlesex County College, as Thomas Edison is really only a distance learning and credit consolidation type school. The plan was to get my BS and continue on for a masters in a more prominent school, but I'm getting kind of burnt out going nights.

Employment


Linden Movie Theater, Linden, NJ: 1991?-1991?,
Usher/ticket sales
Yes, I was really eager to enter the working community. Well, at least I wasn't a french fry technician at BK. I was fired from this job for having hippy-length hair.

?? Research Company, Linden, NJ: 1991-1992
Interviewer
I have no idea what the actual name of this place was. What I do remember was sitting in a room full of people calling a list of numbers trying to administer surveys to people that were eating dinner. It wasn't exactly telemarketing, but it wasn't much better. I lost that job when they went out of business. Seconds felt like minutes, minutes felt like hours, hours felt like...are you still reading this?

Bayway Burglar Alarm, Linden, NJ: 1992-1994
Installer/Troubleshooter
Work for this one-man operation was very sporadic. He found out I had some wiring skills through a teacher of mine and gave me a call whenever he had a big job that he couldn't handle on his own. I considered it a source of extra pocket money.

Linden Electric Supply, Roselle, NJ: 1993-1995
Shipping clerk/Counter sales/Driver
I got this job on a recommendation through my high school work study program. I went to school half-day and then went to work. While I was hired as a general gopher/order picker, they eventually realized I knew quite a bit about the electrical trade and learned very quickly. I was then promoted to a counter salesman which required knowledge of all the electrical parts they sold.

Nobody Beats the Wiz, Newark, NJ: 1994-1994
Order picker/checker
For some reason, I thought I had too much spare time on my hands so I took this part-time night job at the Wiz warehouse. At that time I was going to DeVry from 7am to noon, worked Linden Electric from 1pm to 5pm, then at the Wiz from 5:30pm to 10pm. What's worse is I stuck it out until I was laid off from the Wiz.

SSB Technologies, Kenilworth, NJ: 1995-1996
Assembler/Tester
This was a very fulfilling job working for a great employer. My daily task was assembling Microwave (not the oven) Amplifiers for use in point to point wireless transmission systems. It required a very steady hand as the parts I was soldering were the size of a grain of rice. After assembly, I had to test, tune, and document each amplifier to get it within strict specifications. I left Linden Electric to work here, but it was still part time because I was still going to DeVry mornings.

Telcordia Technologies (formerly Bellcore), Piscataway, NJ: 1996-2000
Equipment Coding Engineer
After graduating DeVry, this was the first full-time job I took (the start of my "career"). My responsibility was to analyze telephone equipment vendor documentation and classify each piece based on a strict set of standards documents based on FCC guidelines. The purpose of this coding was to help phone companies and other carriers to manage both the inventory and asset tracking of vast amounts of equipment.

Telcordia Technologies, Piscataway, NJ: 2000-pres.
Network Identification Standards Engineer
In the same way companies need to track and manage their equipment, they also do the same for all the network channels. Each channel and interface a company owns gets identified with a code. This is even more important now that companies must allow open access to their networks. When another company wants to buy or lease access to a network, they must identify what kind of circuit and interface they need, as well as where they want it to terminate. It is my responsibility to manage this codeset, documentation, and tools as well as organize customer requests to change the codeset.

Thanks for reading the partial digital representation of a guy named Bob