THud is short for Tom Hudson. I got that name back when I was a bank teller. Tellers had to sign everything. After signing many dozens of items per day for weeks, my signature began to look like T__Hud___. Thus, THud.

This picture, by the way, was taken when I was about 40, so it is more than 17 years old. Check the pic on the HOME page for something that looks abit more like me.

Appropriately—and you may want to check out the section on Book Stuff to see why this paragraph makes any sort of sense—at the age of 14, I became a librarian. You know. Public Library for $1.25 an hour sort of job. Some 42 years later I still am, only I don't get paid for it. My current "library" takes up several rooms of my house and has expanded beyond books.

As my wife is want to say, "If he acquires two of anything, it constitutes the beginning of a new collection."

Today, my collections include several thousand books (mostly science fiction), little and big bottles of whiskey (single malts, of course), laserdiscs, DVDs, videotapes, Animaniacs cel art, books on tape and CD (mostly comedy and science fiction) and...

I was co-owner of a New Media development company, Merlin Media, Inc. located in San Jose. "New Media?" you may well ask. Sure. New media as in digital video production, interactive CD-ROMs, DVDs and web sites.

New forms of communicating ideas and information that use to be performed using older forms of media such as TV, video tapes, overhead slides, PowerPoint or Persuasion slide shows, etc.

Historically, I have been in the computer business on one form or another since 1979. I spend a couple years selling computers at an independent store in Oregon, was hired by Atari (remember them?) to be their national sales trainer. From there I migrated to a company called ViMart that built one of the first kiosks to demponstrate computer software in retail stores where employees weren't all that computer literate (like Sears and Wards).

Went from there to Apple Computer to be part of their training department where I specialized in creating training for new products, and pioneered the use of interactive CD-ROMs for that purpose.

Then, the planet darkened and the dinosaurs died out. Apple laid off thousands of people during the summer of 1993. That led to my 100 days at AMD (and how they blew!). Not among my best employment decisions.

After that, Merlin Media, which lasted more than 12 years.

Then, in 2004 I had one of those epiphanies. Working 50-60 hour weeks for a quarter century had lost its luster. The fun was over so Patty and I snuck up to Portland, Oregon, had a wonderful real estate agent show us a bunch of homes, and we bought one. It took us another 5 months to get our old house in any condition (it was a MESS-- with all CAPS) to sell and to move up here where I really intended to work half weeks for quite awhile. A couple weeks later I talked with my business partner and told him my 25 hours a week was going to be dropping to around zero.

He wasn't surprised.

So, here I sit, a retired man for these past 7+ years, and have gotten back into writing. But, not to teach computer stuff. oh, no! My new love is fan fiction in the world of Tom Swift. See THIS LINK to check out what I've been able to do in a couple years. And, believe it or not, it is acutally kind of good.