18 Years and thanks for all the Fleets

Today I tendered my official resignation with the Naval Research Laboratory. I worked at the Laboratory for 18 years, under three Presidents and many Congresses. In that time, I pushed for at work EV Charging in the FAST Act, I started the NRL EV Group (link accessible within NRL), I sang with Polly and the Saccharides (no link available), and I even gave some Toastmasters speeches (NRL Link).

I very much enjoyed my time there and really am sad to go but I have been having so many problems paying for #CO2Fre and its maintenance that I have no choice but to accept a new job in the private sector. My only other solace—besides finally getting to write code again—is that I can finally use a part of my McGill degree that I’ve not been able to exercise beyond writing fiction.

Thus, it’s not so much an end, but a new beginning. And who knows what the future may bring! After all, I would like to return to Federal Service on day and accrue at least two more years to get my FERS to 1.1%. The only thing for sure is I’m a lot less available as a coder now.

My First Web Page

I started writing web pages in 1993, months after Tim Burners-Lee published the first HTML specification. The first page I created was dedicated to my love of the Quiet Beatle, George Harrison, and the Roger Damon Price science fiction series, The Tomorrow People. The Tomorrow people was ITV‘s answer to the highly successful Doctor Who series on BBC.

When I created it, I was still at McGill University and so for a while it was hosted on the university web servers. When I left the school I was allowed to download the page and installed it on my work computer, then brought the code home, eventually letting it settle on my official web server.

If you’re curious what that page looked like, search no further than here: The Original George Harrison and Tomorrow People Home Page. Please note, some of the links are long dead but all internal documents are still there. Enjoy!

And remember, I’m available for hire.