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SkillsI started this page in 2026 for two reasons: (1) business has slowed down too much, and (2) I am looking to expand the paid work I can do to other things which I also find interesting. I have been self-employed since 1987, when I resigned my last fulltime job (as an analyst in advanced planning in the defense space program). I am a physicist, but I had gotten fascinated with the potential of computers, whereby personal computers were new back then (can you remember that ... or imagine it if you were born later?). Anyway, as covered elsewhere on this website at great length, I will briefly say here that my I.T. consulting work eventually led me to working overseas in the mid-1990s ... and then in the early 2000s I set up a new company with partners, and I have created and run additional companies and various businesses since then ... but after COVID and dramatic downsizing, I questioned whether or not I wanted to ramp back up doing the same things as before ... I have been thinking of various new businesses which I would be more interested in. My main paid work now is private investigations, something I've been doing for decades, sometimes as a sideline, and sometimes as the main source of income. By the mid-2020s, I had reduced the investigative work to cases which I find more interesting and more pleasant, and have been spending more time brainstorming potential new things to do. I have two long time companies with my wife. One is a real estate agency, which had very good business from 2008 until COVID in 2020, then we had to lay off staff, and it hasn't recovered well after that. The other company is a catch-all for other businesses we do, and which we had been using for our private investigations. Private investigations is "outside of the Ivory Tower" work. Its main appeal is seeing human behaviors and a wide variety of realms which I simply would not see in a "normal" job or specialization. As an investigator, I have been a curious generalist. Many inquiries were like ... hmmmm ... Part of the reason we got a lot of work was because we were willing to take on not only a wide variety of cases but also difficult cases and assignments which others would not accept. I also rejected a lot of cases (with tact) due to client intentions -- we've never been mercenaries. I enjoy meeting a lot of different clients. Many of these clients opened up a lot to me, such as first to solve their problems, but in many cases just personally way beyond that, too. I like to help good people. This broad exposure and experience has made me wise to a lot of human nature and things which go on in the world. However, these are not the only skills I have. Not by a longshot. I have a background as a scientist (degree in physics, but widely read), and have kept up on scientific literature on the web. I don't just read popular articles on the web. I read deep scientific research, carefully, in many fields. So, I would put scientific, analytical skills at the forefront of my list of skills. I've been into I.T. since the mid-1980s, and into Linux since shortly after the first versions came out, with my own usage starting with Slackware in 1993. I have been running my own servers for decades now, including the one serving this website. I don't use control panels. I do most everything from the command line interface (CLI). I have been learning and doing some programming in PHP going back to the mid 2000s, and use MySQL/MariaDB databases. I love databases, and my information is very well organized. PHP still serves my needs. (I have considered also learning some other programming languages, but I just don't have the time for everything so that just won't happen, not a priority.) I hired programmers to help get me started or help speed up things, but that was a long time ago, and they departed long ago. I have been doing my own programming for continuity, though I really need some help. Soliciting volunteers on humanistic projects has proven mostly fruitless, and I am careful about who I trust to do things on my public servers and in my business. So, for a long time now, I have been doing all my own programming. I hope that changes soon, but I can't count on it. I played with Linux workstations for a long time, but used Windows as my primary workstation OS and for my office until Windows 8. Around that time, I switched almost all our office computers to Linux rather than switch people to Windows 8, and Linux was user friendly enough for everybody, even though they were just users, not I.T. people. I and staff had been using OpenOffice and its forked descendant LibreOffice a long time already, instead of Microsoft Office. I helped many other people switch off of Microsoft Office after Microsoft changed its office suite to the "ribbon" menus starting with Office 2007. It was too much of a change for staff. Our email program has long been Thunderbird. (I disliked the huge monolithic Outlook .pst files since the start as regards backups.) I have long thought Linux is a far better operating system in a lot of ways, and it has gone from "good enough" applications programs to now include many "better" applications programs. However, Microsoft got the commercial market early on and people don't change. I still help people with their Windows 10 and Windows 11 installations, and with their Microsoft Office, on their computers, but we are longtime Linux based people. (And I won't get into the StarOffice predecessor of OpenOffice here ...) This website, and most other websites of mine, were created with my own "TreeCMS" content management system, which also organizes references and other information. PHP/MySQL. Not anybody else's content management system (CMS) program. My own. It is unique. For awhile, I had considered selling it, and got the domain TreeCMS.com (and tree-cms.com), but I don't have the time to polish it up and sell it. I would consider maybe partnering with somebody else for that. Enough of I.T. here. I have set up home solar photovoltaic systems. For solar power, I prefer to build my own batteries, ordering LiFePO4 cells and a Battery Management System (BMS) separately, and mounting cells into battery packs. I put tiny digital voltmeters on cells, so that if a cell starts to weaken too much, I can just replace that one cell instead of a whole battery. This can save a LOT of money, and also keep systems running smoothly. My systems are very economical and maintainable. I like to easily see and monitor the details of systems. I am experienced with many power tools, and have my own little workshop. I know some things about engineering, and I enjoy doing engineering analysis and design, especially structural, mechanical, and electrical things. I like making and building things, and tweaking things, and have a fine attention to details. I have been thinking of expanding my business into property development. From my years working for engineering design and construction companies, I am fairly well aware of project management matters.
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