User:Ricardus

The Early Years
I always remember enjoying music, and from my earliest days I was always drawn to music with a lot of motion. Composers like J.S. Bach, and Scarlatti. I later learned that they belonged to a particular era and style of music called Baroque.

I was always attracted to geeky things. When I was a kid, personal computers were very scarce. The MITS Altair 8800 and the IMSAI 8080 were two of the most popular early personal computers, but they were still very rare by today's standards. When I needed a geek fix, I would go to the local Radio Shack store and play with their TRS-80 Model-1 computers. I did have other geeky outlets, however. My dad was an electronics hacker, and he was always building either a Heathkit product, or some other kit-bashed monstrosity. We subscribed to both Popular Electronics, and Radio Electronics magazines, and those always had all sorts of projects to build. It was around this time that I won my very own portable cassette recorder in a grade school contest. From that moment on I was hooked. I would bring it everywhere and record all sorts of stuff. To this very day, I have cassettes from the 1970's of a few bands that had players in them that my dad knew, that we would go hear. I even remember doing razor-blade editing in my Jr. High School music class, with 1/4 inch reel-to-reel tape decks. This is a skill that would later serve me working in analog recording studios. In grade school I also started to learn to play the clarinet. This was more a choice of my parents, and I didn't stick with it past Jr. High.

Teen Years
In High School I geeked out in the school's Computer, Photography, and Electronics clubs. I also was in the theatrical troupe doing technical theater. My friends and I would spend hours in the computer room playing with the earliest Commodore PET computers, with 4K (yes, I said 4K) of RAM. It was around this time that I got my own personal computer, the Commodore VIC-20. I spent many an hour playing with that. Wow. People could own their OWN computers. Amazing. I also started to play the guitar in high school, studying with a variety of local teachers, and playing in a few garage bands. Massive stage fright kept me from playing in more bands.

While in high school, my best friend and I decided to start a lighting company (Omega Lighting) and made extra money by working for local bands providing lighting production. I was a 16 year old kid touring throughout the northeast with a few local bands, scared out of my wits, getting lots of experience, and having lots of interesting experiences. Some day I want to write a book describing those amazing experiences, but as I get older I'm forgetting a lot of them

Post High School/Adulthood
After high school I studied electrical engineering and audio production in college, and when I decided that my scholastic career was over, I worked all different sorts of jobs. I ultimately ended up working at a local recording studio that a friend of mine owned. 32 tracks of ADAT, 24 tracks of analog, and a nice console with some nice mics and outboard gear. Meanwhile another friend of mine was expanding his studio in NJ (yes, I had two friends who owned their own studios). He invited me down to work in his studio. It was an easy decision because he literally had millions of dollars of gear, which meant lots of cool toys. I also happened to get a few decent album credits while I was there. Due to a problem between me and my friend, as well as issues with being paid, I eventually left that studio and went home to central NY, and got a job as Technical Coordinator at a local manufacturer that made audio cabling for the music business. Maybe some of you even have those cables. While working at that cabling company I continued to do Audio Engineering at a local analog facility, where I still work part time.

Currently
When the American economy crashed, I was let go by the cabling company, and remain between jobs, with hopes to do more audio engineering, and am I contemplating starting my own record label.

Odds-N-Ends
I never stopped being interested in computers, and in the mid 1980's got the BBS bug, and eventually put one up of my own. At that time I kept hearing about this thing called UNIX, which intrigued me a great deal, and I wanted to own my own UNIX box. In 1990 or so I ordered Red Hat 5.2, and satisfied my "UNIX bug." Obviously my interest in Linux remains to this day. Another bug that I had once upon a time, was to start a pirate radio station with my friends, playing the kind of music that we liked, like Prog Rock, and Jazz. That never happened, but I would later start my own podcast with a friend, which satisfied my pirate radio bug. That podcast temporarily went dark in June of 2009, but came back online in March of 2012 with a new co-host. I also occasionally guest on other shows, when time permits.

Interests
In my spare time I like to think, write on my blog, curl (winter ice sport), read, cook, drink wine, play my guitar, ride my bike, and go to independent films.

Some day I might grow up, but I hope not. :-)