J Leslie Booth:  

Life My wife, Debra, and I are still in the W. Lafayette area - for at least a couple more years. I'm back working on my own now. Enjoying a bit of creativity with some really interesting projects and now bowing to the worst boss I've ever had: ME >> net500cgATgmailDOTcom Hopefully 2007 will be a very bright year for all of us from the old SHS days of yore. I trust the rest of y'all are doing well and enjoying life, too. Got to man! We've done burnt through the first half already .. eh? Whatever you do, don't shake that sand-clock! Those grains are going way too, fast as it is! Best to you all. -- les "Know Ripples, Know Change. No Ripples, No Change." (TM) School Biggest Crush ? Some secrets are better kept silent. No regrets. But I will say, there were 4 young ladies who held title to that fantasy. ME >> net500cgATgmailDOTcom Most Inspirational Teacher? That would have to be shared by 3 teachers: Mr. Orwin -> his red pen taught me to expand my expression, with what he called, "detailed brevity". To a Sanguine temperament, this was a near death sentence; a major contradiction in reality. But, finally, I got it. Mrs. Crone -> she believed in me where I couldn't even see. She planted a time-release desire to KNOW. It worked, too. Still does. Mr. Cromwell -> his infectious love of other cultures bode well with me as I have dealt with hundreds of people from all walks of life and many foreign cultures. Respectful curiosity builds deep relationships. Seeger was a fun time. Mostly because I knew everyone there either from the time I walked into the first day of 1st Grade, or the very first day walking into Seeger High. We knew each other. We were a small group - we were a Family. All of us have learned - long ago for the most part - that the stuff we worried about in school were less than 'not important'; they weren't even real. But there is one thing that has surprised me over the years. Even though I've not seen but a mere handful of any of my classmates in over 25 years, there isn't a week that goes by that I don't see the names and faces ( at least the ones I remember from nearly 35 years ago!) tumbling out of my memories. Memories are one of our greatest treasures. For me, at least, there were a lot of really good memories built in my days at Seeger Memorial High. College College came for me late in the game, despite an early start right out of Seeger. I spent the Fall Semester of '71 in California attempting to study, Business Insurance Law at Ambassador College in Pasadena, CA. Oh, we won't even talk about how WRONG that match was!! Let's just say it was a bad choice of Study. ME >> net500cgATgmailDOTcom I was also auditing classes on Architecture and Design at Pasadena City College and UCLA. I burnt out .. quickly. I finished out my Spring Semester, back at home, at Purdue. When I came home I was exhausted and burned out. Then I dropped the idea of college. I was turned off to it - too much bureaucracy and bull-S*%t. Oh, the wisdom of a 19-year old! And was I ever FULL-OF-IT!! ": \ That bit of lunacy set me back a few years. However, in hind site, it was really for the best. I spent the next 17 years working in the College/University environments: University of Kentucky (and by extension with 3 groups I worked with there, the entire Southeast Conference school system and most of the Atlantic Coast and some of the Big Ten schools). Then I came to Purdue in '80 and worked there - either as an employee or as a consultant to numerous departments on the WL campus. Then it hit me in '89, I really need my 'Go Card' ... my term for a diploma. So, the Spring Semester of '90 saw me enrolled and committed to completing a degree in Fisheries & Aquatic Science. Fourteen days into the new semester I found what I had been searching for since April 1975 ... a way to work and conduct business, from any place on earth. Today we call it the Internet. I rode the wave all the way through the 'regular term for school'... 5 years. But because I was so 'Tronned' - immersed in the cyber world - I took me another 15 years to finally procure that degree. This past December (2006), I finally received my diploma (Ag Systems Management). Since 1990 I've been involved in some very interesting, challenging, front-line and cutting-edge projects. They have taken me to p...Expand for more