30 September 2010: Could the age of the personal website be over? The ease with which social network pages can be updated from desktops to Blackberry's would seem to suggest it. Or it may just be that I'm still editing HTML directly with a pretty old program called "HomeSite" (version 4.0 from 1998!) and it simply can't compete with the Facebook interface, for example, in terms of timeliness and ease of use. Then again, neither I nor HomeSite is spying on you or your friends, either. I'm making a last valiant stab at keeping this site somewhat current, starting with this page and working my way through the other pages; I'm even toying with the idea of converting some part of this site to a blog.
A lot has happened in the year since I last even visited my own website. After losing our last, best dog in October 2009, we inherited a five year-old Boxer a few months later andsoon after in a fit of misguided mourningwe impulse-purchased a white "Mastiff-mix" puppy of indeterminate origin that is white, but likely lacking any Mastiff genes having had those crowded out by her Spaniel / Pit (?) parents. She's a bitch from the wrong side of the Hopkinsville, Kentucky tracks as it were, and she's keeping our lives interesting with displays of opportune puppy chewing (wife's shoes, Boxer's collar, socks, underwear) and she's hobbled by congenitally-bad knee caps that we can only hope will miraculously heal thyselves. Anna Belle and her Boxer sister Chelsea are pretty good dogs, but the emotional attachment thing is probably going to take a few more years to even approach the feelings we had for our late Mastiff-Rottweiler mix Miette. Those are the breaks, girls. |
About Troy Barber |
Troy Barber is a business development professional with 9+ years’ experience selling consulting services and high-tech consumables (he is currently working for a full-service product development firm in Manchester, New Hampshire). He is a graduate of the University of Connecticut, the University of Texas, and North Carolina State University. He is still paying for two of those degrees and may leave those debts to his children.
Mr. Barber is a Hoosier by birth, but a Wildcat fan by the Grace of God. He spent his undergraduate years at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, followed by a year in Tianjin, China studying Mandarin Chinese. At the close of his year abroad Barber also traveled for several weeks in western China, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, where he studied how not to piss off the local people (Uighurs, Pathans, Afghani warlords, Tamil Tigers). It was in Pakistan that Mr. Barber first developed the "Dysentery Diet," a sensible alternative to expensive diet programs that force you to buy proprietary food stuffs and enormous oversized clothing for their bogus TV commercials. You can learn more about the "Dysentery Diet" by flying to Rawalpindi, Pakistan, and drinking a couple of tasty and refreshing "Mango Milkshakes". Also, you can read another traveler's account of a trip remarkably similar to Mr. Barber's jaunt down the Karakorum Highway here. "Mothman" is Mr. Barber's electronic handle. The appellation has had particular meaning for him since his undergraduate days at the University of Connecticut, where he drew the much-maligned Mothman and Co. comic strip for UCONN's nationally recognized student daily, The Daily Campus. A few samples from Mr. Barber's "Comic Period" can be found on this site. Prior to his matriculation at UCONN, he'd come across the John Keel classic The Mothman Prophecies in the humble Clinton, Connecticut Public Library. For anyone interested in the preternatural, The Mothman Prophecies is not to be trifled with. |
mothman@NOSPAMfritter.com (If you don't know to manually remove the "no spam" from my email address, then you probably shouldn't be emailing me anyway) |