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.

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. Some 35 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 Scotch whiskey (single malts, of course), laserdiscs, DVDs, videotapes, Animaniacs cel art, books on tape (mostly comedy and science fiction) and...

I am 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 lead to my 100 days at AMD (and how they blew!). Not among my best employment decisions.

After that, Merlin Media, now into our 10th year of business.