CHOISSER INC.
ORANGE PARK, FLORIDA

- and you can learn more about each of us by visiting those pages. Much of our site, though, is a joint effort, and also, here on this page you are reading now, you'll find some facts about us, facts that we share in common. They are in no particular order, but together, they say much about who we are. We both hail from small towns of about 4000 population, far removed from any urban area. As children, we both saw nearby mountains out of the windows of our rooms. We both attended public grade schools where all of the town's children, rich and poor, attended class together. Our towns' peoples all saw themselves as "Americans", not as being in social sub-groups as is the case today in much of urban America. Our concept of "privacy" is different than that many Americans now hold, because everyone knew everyone else's business. This had an upside; their interest in others was largely rooted in their caring about others. A man in our towns grew up knowing he had this thing called "his reputation", which meant if you would be ashamed of something, you just wouldn't do it. If one word were chosen to describe us, we are "communicators". We have edited newsletters for organizations we've belonged to. We have in more recent years created their web sites. One might think that ham radio was an unusual interest for two men without stellar hearing, but ham radio is a very diverse communications hobby. Bill has no trouble understanding Morse code, and he used that mode of communication for many years. By the early 1980s, amateur radio operators had developed what we would now call an e-mail system, called "packet radio". We were doing e-mail for more than a decade before people in general were doing it, or even knew what it was. By the late 1980s, we were running a bulletin board system out of our house, and we have later heard it referred to as "San Francisco's first ISP". We had it backed up with emergency power, and it handled thousands of messages coming out of San Francisco after the 1989 earthquake. We are both very literate in reading and in writing. We both have authored books. We both have college degrees and professional licenses in the areas where we did our work. You won't find resumes for either of us on our web site, and we don't join employment-related networking sites. Hey, we are retired! We do readily join other sites that meet our needs. When we do so, we use our real names, so you will know if you see us. The law required ham radio operators not be anonymous, our small-town backgrounds offered no such opportunity, and we've in fifty years never had anything ill come from saying who we are. Also, as communicators, we know a writer connects with his readers far better if they know who he is, and we place great value upon that connection. Though we are retired now, in our work lives we were very stable. We tended to take a job and stick with it. We both know how to work with others and that "knowing when the ball is in one's court" is essential in getting work done. When we did leave an employment situation, it was generally met with our being asked to stay. We also appreciate living in a world class city, despite our small-town origins. A world class city is a place where one's options to celebrate his uniqueness are the greatest. Such cities are few even in any widespread area, and typical of that, America only has a few. We are delighted to be living our lives in one of them. We've had our web site for a long time. Exploring from our home page will reveal what we are into now. We don't remove material if we feel others may still find it of interest, but we don't mix it in with our current interests, because we feel laying out our current interests is important. If you came to our site expecting to find something but don't, well, that is what Google is for.