Robert Nicholas:
CLASS OF 1987
Hesperia High SchoolClass of 1987
Hesperia, MI
Robert's Story
Hey everyone. I'm glad you came. I'm in the process of populating this profile with all sorts of information, so things will change quite a lot over time. Come back and see me, and leave a message. I'd love to find out what you've been up to.
Here's a very quick overview of where I've been and what I've been doing the last twenty-some years:
[1987 - 1991] Army. Germany 3 yrs
[1992] Electronics tech school
[1992] Garage and performing bands
[1992 - 1993] Sundance, WY. Mechanic
[1993 - 1994] MSU. Lanugage, Science
[1994 - 1995] Holland, MI. Maint Supv
[1995] Married Leah Simons. Stepdaughter, Corinne 5yo
[1995 - 1997] Amway QA Tech, Ada, MI
[1997 - 2000] Electronics Instructor, NIT
[2000] Consumer Electronics Tech, Rentway
[2000 - 2001] Machine Maint, MI Bulb, GR, MI
[2000 - 2001] NetAdmin tech school
[2001] WLAN Technology researcher, consultant, author
[2002] No noteworthy employment
[2003 - 2010] Augusta, GA area. NetTech, NetAdmin
[2010 - present] Augusta, GA area. Senior Technical Writer for Aerohive Networks in Sunnyvale, CA
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A BIT MORE DETAIL:
While in the Army (1987-1991) I discovered an affinity for languages and began to study Russian on my own. At that time there were few easy-to-use methods for language learning, so I bought a book and started reading. I got to be okay at Russian, but there was no one to speak it with, so my facility with it waned over time. My time in Germany gave me a great opportunity to learn German. By the time I left Germany in 1991, I was conversant in the language, though not fluent.
I discovered the etymological confluence of English and German words somewhat later and became fascinated with how language is put together, and how the various languages are related. That has led me to study the ancient languages such as Anglo-Saxon (Old English), Classical Latin, and both Ancient Greek (to about 1st C. AD) and "Koine" Greek (from 1st C. to about 10th C. AD).
I've also taken great pains to study many on the important modern languages in addition to English, German, and Russian, such as Spanish, French, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and Persian. To a far lesser extent, I'd become acquainted with Gaelic (Scottish and Irish), Polish, Serbo-croation (Bosnian), Slovenian, Arabic, Cantonese, Vientamese, and Italian. Many of these I only remember a few words, and the grammar and syntax are but relics in my distant memory. Now I just concentrate on the first ten or so languages.
My formal education is sparse to say the least, at least as compared to what my goals were early on. I've graduated from two tech schools, Electronics Engineering Technology and Network Administrator, and tried my hand at conventional college life at Michigan State. MSU is a very nice campus and I thrived academically, landing on the Dean's list the whole time I was there, but the social and political environment there was so toxic to me that I simply had to go. It was a bittersweet adieu--I loved the learning environment.
My premarital wanderings include living in Hesperia, Grand Rapids, Sundance, WY, and E. Lansing. I've always had the Wanderlust, and I used it to great advantage while in Germany, during which time I visited the German cities of Stuttgart (college party town), Leichtenstein (impressive cliff side castle), Frankfurt (Beer in Sachsenhausen), Berlin (where I attended Roger Water's "The Wall" in Potzdamerplatz--surreal!), Trier (the oldest city in Germany, and former Roman outpost), Munich (Oktoberfest! Interestingly in September--"Alle Kruege Hoch!"), and many others. Outside Germany I visited Paris, Cherbourg, and La Havre in France ("Pouvoir la France perd leurs dents dans un combat!"); Zurich and Chiasso in Switzerland; and Dublin, Rosslare, Wexford, and Blarney Castle in Ireland ("Slainte! Erin go bragh!")
Now I reside near Augusta, GA in a suburb called Martinez. Naturally, being in the south, it is pronouned MART'nezz. Among my seeming paradoxes are that I've played piano in a church praise band without so much a single cell in my body infused with the Holy Spirit, and that I've been unemployed for a 9-month stretch at a time while being one of maybe 50 people world wide qualified to teach Wireless LAN Administration (an occupation that garners roughly $5000 per working week).
Well now, after years and years of being victimized by bad economies, bad judgment, and lack of foresight, things in my life have begun to stabilize. It's a cautionary tale, really, the story of my life so far, but I'm not sure how much of it was changeable if...Expand for more
had it to do over. Sometimes it just takes a long time for maturity of the mind to catch up with that of the body. I know I spent a long time trying to be what everyone seemed to think I was supposed to be: scientist, researcher, whatever, but I discovered late that it doesn't work that way. I also spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself because *I* was supposed to be the smart one, but everyone around me was simply zooming past, and I became trapped in a raging current of self-imposed failures. What should have been the best (college) years of my life turned out to be among the worst.
An interesting side effect of chronic depression and disappointment in oneself--at least if one a little right-brained--is that the energy created from one's introspection and self-loathing tends to manifest as art of some sort. Mine manifested as music and poetry, and I began to compose music and experiment with poetic styling. Naturally, most were awful, after all, beginners suck at what they do. But for a while I was rather prolific, writing pages of long, awkward poems each day, most dismal expressions of my piss-poor self image. I began to keep a book of my poems, having bound all my previous stuff together. In the end, there were many, many pages of poetic abstraction. That book was lost sometime after the summer of 1994. Maybe it was a fortunate happenstance--the stuff was awful from an artistic standpoint, but if I were to look at it now, I'm sure I would see some insights that I could never have recognized then. In that sense, it is a true loss.
That was a bit of a turning point for me, I think. I began at that point to look at things with an artist's eye, considering the aesthetic. Not just visually--how 'pretty' stuff was, but aesthetic of sound, form, and composition. I began to take notice of the flow and framing of photographs, the layered aspects of music, what makes beautiful speech, rhetoric and elocution, color balance in paintings, forms and lines in everything from sculptures to automobiles. This is not to say that I donned my burlap and beads and started skipping about humming Yellow Submarine and watching Gene Kelly musicals. I'm just saying that the way I looked on the world changed.
I was married in November, 1995 to Leah Simons, who had a five-year-old daughter, Corinne, who was among the brightest children I'd even seen. Very precocious. Not many five-year-old kids use words like "although" and "incidentally," but Corinne did. Leah is a gifted vocalist and she and I have performed a number of times, and Corinne is similarly endowed with a beautiful, but untrained voice. Corinne is also a gifted writer who could, by the age of 16, eloquently paraphrase Hawthorne. Astounding.
In addition to writing, Corinne has an analytical sensibility about things as well, and has parlayed that into a local flight training scholarship and a slot in the Aeronautical Engineering department of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, FL. Go Kid!
Meanwhile, Leah and I have accustomed ourselves to the empty nest and spend a lot of time just enjoying one another's company. I've converted and moved most of our DVD films to a media server I created, so now we can just double-click any movie or archived TV show we want to view. I also spend a lot of time now studying Wireless Networking (IEEE 802.11-2007) standards with all its various proposed amendments--about 2000 pages, and languages, concentrating on Spanish; ancient, Koine, and modern Greek; and from time to time, Anglo-Saxon and Classical Latin. Although, I've been feeling pull of Irish Gaelic since about October 08. We'll see where that goes, I suppose.
For our 13th Valentine's Day, I composed a sonnet for Leah, and I'd like to share it with you, whoever you are. Unless you're a stalker or I owe you money. The final two lines are normally indented, but I cannot indent them here. (Also there should be 14 lines instead of only 10--the missing four lines were omitted by mistake.) Apologies for upsetting your delicate literary sensibilities, if it be so.
Ascending alpine majesties beheld
Or sailing the pacific seas untossed
Uncovering the timeless secrets held
Revealing wisdom ancient ages lost
To run along a stream in shuffled steps
Unfeathered arms as my pretended wings
In fancy's flight I glide through time unkept
To land amongst imaginary things
The only thing I think my better this
Can be to have from you a single kiss
So long, folks, until my next addendum/rewrite.
Robert Nicholas,
3/21/2009
(added some details, 8/10/2012)
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