Bart Gaffney:  

I'm living in Oconomowoc with wife: Kelly and daughters: Samantha ( Sophomore and Alpha Gamma Delta Sorority sister at Carrol U ) and Hanna ( Honors Sr at Oconomowoc HS, headed for UW Stevens Point for a BFA in Theater ). Kelly works in Waukesha for the Orthopaedic Surgeons in the Moorland Medical Clinic. She is an administrative assistant and specialzes in Sports Medicine and Surgery and has been with OAW for 25 plus years. I work in Pewaukee in a small machine shop, where I am the primairy Q.C. inspector, but wear a number of hats. Anything from Running Machinery on the shop floor, HR and Insurance issues, Payroll, Web Design, Security - CCTV, etc. After graduation I worked in Maintenance for the County of Waukesha at Northview Home and Hospital. That is where I met Kelly. After we were married I broke into the printing industry on the pre-press side of things as a lithographer and color seperator and followed the graphic arts. At the time, desktop publishing was an emerging fuzzy gooey science, and we rode the wave. I operated some of the first systems and macintosh computers. Worked for a company that beta tested for Kodak and its color sciences and compression technology leading to its Photo CD and CD authoring. The world wide web was also taking off and you no longer needed to communicate via text on a screen with bulliten boards solely. I boned up on HTML and web design. Fascinated by the concept of "Cross-Platform" media and traditional print being paperless as well as its video implications, I wanted to make the next technological step into A/V media and Broadcasting. It was at this time that we suffered both our house fire and the loss of income, as the printer I worked for closed its doors. The market in printing had changed over the years and I could not see myself going back. When served lemons...make lemonade, so I used the time off to rebuild our home and at its completion make the career switch into the AV market. I started off in AV working for a company that was creating the Badgernet distance learning network for the K-12 market here in Wisconsin. Linking up all participating schools to Video Conference with other schools across the the state for shared study. We were on the cutting edge of video conferencing. That company promoted me to Inventory Control, then Inside Sales, then as a Rental and Staging mgr, and finally to Broadcast sales and High End Presentation sales. I worked for a number of A/V companies in sales over the years and my last gig was as the Wisc state sales rep for a company based out of Phoinex AZ. They specialized in selling solely to the educational markedplace ( which in Wisconsin was underfunded, saturated by years of exposure and already well established. ) I worked out of a home office and traveled all over the state to K-12 schools Universities, and Tech Schools. What was good about this time in our lives was it afforded me the opportunity to really stay involved in our two girls activities and interests. I could design my work around them and got to be the "Cheerleading Dad, Softball Dad, Gymnastics Dad, Forensics Dad, Tae-kwon-do Dad, Drama Dad,...you get the idea. As the Educational AV marketplace was breathing its last dying breath for me, a friend of mine had an opening in a local machine shop and needed someone that could wear multiple hats. I took it on a temporary basis, but that was years ago, so I guess it's not so temporairy after all... I still tinker with Art, Graphics and Web design as well as too many other outside interests and hobbies, but I'm learning to let some things go and try to simplify my interests as well. ( <----- He's in denial ) One thing we as...Expand for more