Rob Durstewitz:  

I have just moved back to Pompton Lakes in my parent's house. I am trying to manage a severe elder care situation which has been going on since the new year. I've been a travelling 911 Field Engineer for the last 7 years. Basically, I've been heading for the airport every Monday, and living out of a suitcase for those years. I install and support 911 equipment at the call-taker end. Most of my work is in police stations and larger emergency communications centers. I am a hybrid of a computer/network technician and a phone/communications technician. Basically, my job is to make a computer think that it is a telephone. The work is very specialized and the network of associates is small, tight and nationwide. As well as doing 2-40 seat jobs all over the country, I have also (lately) been working on some very large & long projects. In the past several years, the entire Commonwealth of Mass, and (for the last two years) the mammoth NYC 911 project. I am a veteran of 3 marriages. London, Rio and Jersey City. Two of the marriages produced children. I have two children who were born and raised in Rio de Janeiro (20 & 22 yrs old). I have two children living in the Philadelphia area (10 & 14 yrs old). I am now an avid bachelor, happily short of all resources to be of any interest to anyone (Thank Goodness!) After school, I joined the Navy. I was stationed on a destroyer. Going to sea and being part of ship's company was the most exciting of all the adventures. Wish I wasn't a rebellious youth during my enlistment! After the Navy, I went to Parsons School of Design and moved into NYC in 1976. There, I worked as a graphic artist by day and a singer/songwriter/band leader in the NYC club scene during the 80's. After 18 years of the "artistic life", the babies started coming. I thought it best to end 18 years of working off the books and "go straight". I moved out of NYC and into Jersey City (where I was born) and lived there for 12 years. The year was 1987 and I was working as a temporary secretary on Wall Street (fast typist). I began to be more interested in how the computer worked, rather than the work I was doing on it. I studied for, and received, my Novell Certified Network Engineer certification in 1993. This was back when Microsoft networking was a joke. The needed change of life did not produce results quickly enough for the mother of my Brazilian kids. She never came back from a 1990 "visit" to Rio. I eventually started another family in Jersey City. Those babies started coming in 1995. I rapidly moved from one c...Expand for more