Welcome.

I am, among other things, a single dad who is very proud of his son, long time musician, systems administrator, computer security guy, programmer, audio engineer, music producer, writer, synthesist/audio designer, doer of webpages, researcher, professional cook, voracious reader and occasional political activist in the Austin, TX area. I am of the humble opinion that you should hire me immediately.

My family has been in this area a long time; I'm sixth generation. We've been mostly in and around Uhland and Lockhart, twenty miles SSE of Austin; mine is the first generation not raised on the farm, and the first that didn't speak German in the home. Our Kirchhof clan migrated mostly from the Magdeburg area, on the Elbe west of Berlin.

I've been a Sysadmin for quite a while -- long enough to have some obscure skills that fall into the "buggy whip maker" category. (Anyone need a UUCP or C-news guru?) It is still an interesting field to me, and I especially enjoy creating administration tools in Perl, securing machines and networks, nailing interoperability problems, and designing solutions to get rid of irritating problems. I've lately been doing a lot of work for the good folks at eBlox

I have the delight of playing keyboards with several excellent bands from time to time; I am an occasional member of dem ol' (and legendary) Greezy Wheels. I also occasionally get calls to play with a few other bands around town when they need a keyboard player.

I'm also an experienced sound reinforcement and recording engineer. I used to tour a lot, but these days I am pretty geocentric to the Austin area. I get to work with the folks that I like, and it's a fine way to spend my time.

This site is always under construction to some degree; as far as content goes, my current offering is small, but hopefully of some redeeming substance:

An ongoing quotations collection.

A fairly active weblog.

I have a Myspace page where I do a lot of my music networking and a LinkedIn page where I do a lot of my geekery networking.

Most of my prose output has been either copywriting or in-house technical writing that's both (a) not publicly available and (b) profoundly uninteresting, but a couple of fun examples might include:

Conversations with a conservative (over at the Greezy site), an example of my personal political views. (And my zest for research, for that matter.) A bit dated now, but the links are still there for whoever wants to update themselves.

The history of the Mau Mau Chaplains (at the Mau Mau site.) I'm no longer a member of the Maus, but this is a sort of a musical C.V. of me and some of my friends in the Austin music biz for the last quarter century or so.

You can e-mail me by using this form.

More will be forthcoming in the fullness of time. Thanks for stopping by!