About Kevin

Hey there… just on that SLIM chance that someone has found their way to this blog AND doesn’t know much about me AND would like to know something about what I’ve been up to these fifty-some years… here’s a peek.

If they play enough similar roles, or if the role is very successful, actors run the risk of getting type-cast.  That’s certainly true as we go through life as well!  If you were to ask a bunch of people who know (or at least know OF) me, “Who’s Kevin?” you’re going to get some pretty different answers [you might even wonder if they’re all talking about the same person], and each of those people are going to put me into a box (or two) with some label on it.  The thing is… I don’t tend to stay in boxes, and some of the things I’ve gotten into have even surprised me [to the point where if someone had told me back in the mid-90’s (or earlier) what I’d be up to in the next 20 (or so) years of my life, I’d have tried to get them committed].

 

Always an Engineer

Even before my first day in kindergarten, I had this reputation as an “inventor” among my kid friends.  So when the teacher asked the class about who should/could build a bird feeder for outside our classroom windows, I (to my surprise) got elected (drafted?) to the job.  Of course that task was beyond me, but with the help of my grandfather and father, the bird feeder did get built (and a very nice bird feeder, at that).  There was a “career test” I took about 10 years ago on Tickle.com [their tests are now part of Monster.com] which plugged me into Engineering, and said: “Careers in this field often demand that you be exceptionally creative, and think ‘outside of the box.’  Enjoying an engineering career means having an insatiable curiosity for figuring out how things work.  Having an interest in developing your math and spatial skills helps too.  Most likely, you’re interested in not just taking things apart but putting them back together again.”  I totally agree!  A recent “green test” from ebay confirmed: “Uniquely Green Builder: You have a gift. What many of us think of as chores, you anticipate with excitement. Ripping out a bathroom wall, climbing up a rickety ladder to insulate the attic, tinkering with your car—to you, it’s fun. When it comes to being green, you might consider updating your home with more energy- and water-efficient appliances and using recycled auto parts instead of new. Being a Builder is a gift—you see a need for improvement and are willing to roll up your sleeves to make that change.”  Again… totally me.  I have some skills, and some tools, and I’m happy when I’m using them.

So I have a lot of fun creating things and making things… and that included cars for a time as well (back when I had more time to devote to such things, and it was easier to work on them).  I mean… after all… if I like to build things, wouldn’t I want to build the car I drive, too?  [I always said it was good I never learned how to fly a plane, or I’d be building one of those as well.]  So after graduating from high school (where in any free time you’d either find me in the Industrial Arts Department’s Electronics Shop, or somewhere in the Music Dept.), I built a Bradley GT, shown in the top photo [well, actually re-built, as the guy who built it the first time made a real mess of it].  That was the car that got me to and from wherever I was going — rain [hopefully not TOO rainy, as the gull-wing doors were not super water tight], snow [VW air cooled engines really only get heat into the interior of the car when going over 65 MPH], or shine [dark windows + black interior + no opening windows + no A/C = BAKE].  Then in the early 80’s, I took on building the more advanced white Bradley GT-II, and almost got it done before marriage [wife wanted to park in the garage] and later kids put an end to any free time for such fun projects.

I’m sure it’ll come as no surprise to you that I’ve chosen to build just about anything I can (providing it’s not something I gotta have NOW, which I can dash out to the store and buy).  I’ve lost track of the number of Heathkits I’ve built (back when there WERE Heathkits to build)… but I do know it’s over 100 kits [everything from my soldering iron (which I still have and use), up to a 25″ console color TV.  In the office picture at the bottom of this post — desk from the Unpainted Place and finished by me, and the office shelves were my gig.  Get the idea?

 

From back when computer were REAL computers…

Although I was studying the logic circuits which comprise computers back in high school, it wasn’t until I got into St. Olaf College that I started working with REAL computers [6 foot tall DEC PDP-11 series].  This was back before there was any PC or Mac.  Back when computers were REAL computers and programmers were REAL programmers!  And for the next 20 years I pretty much did it all — hardware and software.  There wasn’t any computer project I didn’t take on — always striving to get the most out of the systems (which cost a LOT of money) for my employer or clients.  Many times I did things which I was told after the fact, were “impossible” [to which I usually replied, “Well jeez — I’m glad you didn’t tell me before I DID it!”].  As my independent consulting practice grew in the 90′s, so did the system I had in my home to develop, test, and debug the software I was writing [system in top photo, which if purchased new would have cost more than the house (but of course I picked it up piece by piece used)].  I never got the use I’d planned on out of the system, because the computer world was changing very rapidly and people were leaving the “big iron” systems (though infinitely more reliable) and custom software,  in favor of microprocessors and shrink-wrapped software.  Working for people who were making short sighted decisions based on “the bottom line” and spreadsheets instead of system architecture, performance, and longer term maintenance costs was getting to be… um… a pain.  I could no longer fix problems with the systems, as they weren’t my systems any longer.  We’d just have to wait for the next release or patch and hope that the problem was fixed.  I don’t have to tell you what that does to the level of satisfaction with the Information Systems Department (and consequently performance reviews).  It was time to get out of the corporate world (at least in so far as their information systems go).  (Which was fine, as there were other things happening in my life about then.)

 

An Interesting “Experiment”

In the late 90′s (1998, I think), I read an interesting little book called The Joy of Perfect Health.  It was written by Tom Chalko, who had overcome cancer in his 40′s.  As you might surmise, the premise of the book is that you can live in perfect health without ever having to be sick or ill or have any disease, ever again!  I found such a concept to be very interesting [blatantly in opposition to what would seem obvious and to the contrary], and so I decided to check it out and see if by chance Chalko was right.  I won’t go into the changes I made [that’s detailed in my “Keys to Perfectly Sound Health“], but let me just say I have not been sick or ill or had any condition or have taken any medicine (other than an aspirin on rare occasions for pain) since the start of this experiment back in the late 90′s to see if I could never be sick again!  (That’s right… never sick, in spite of my kids bringing home stuff they contracted from others in school, working in a toxic corporate environment, and treating others who are ill [some in a hospitals].)

Researching how and why this worked, and most of all, how I could help others who were NOT enjoying perfect health, lead me to learn Healing Touch [which began in nursing and is now being used in many hospitals], and to found Sound Mind & Body Healing Center.  This was good, but Healing Touch was not effective enough, and it wasn’t bringing in much money.  Always striving for better, faster and cheaper for my clients, I got into the areas of thought, thinking and consciousness, and then became certified as a hypnotherapist as hypnosis seemed the most effective way to assist people to change their thinking.  This was better (and better known than Healing Touch [although hypnosis has some public relations issues]), but still not good enough.  I’ll continue this thread after an interlude into another area.

 

Music and Sound

It may seem outside the engineering “box” to address music, but it’s not that unusual at all.  In fact, many of the great scientists and thinkers of the past have also been musically inclined (including Einstein, who played the violin quite well), and it is a very sad reflection on our present younger generation that so few have chosen to play a musical instrument as part of the education.  [When I was playing the clarinet and bass clarinet in the Sibley High School Band in the 70’s, we had around 200 people in the band.  That school today (which my daughter just graduated from) has more students there than when I was there, and yet they had only about 40 in the marching band this summer.]

I’ve been fascinated with music, sound, and sound technology since day 1.  We only had a “phonograph” to play records on, but I used it a lot, and later after much begging and pleading my family purchased a reel to reel tape recorder stereo system (which I also put to a great deal of use).  I was drawn to instruments which allowed for a great variety of sound, and since electronic music synthesizers were in their infancy (and VERY pricey), an organ was the best I could find.  When I was in junior high, we finally acquired a spinet organ, and I was off and running at last on keyboards!  The spinet was later replaced with a full-sized organ (two full keyboards and 32 pedals), so I could play classical organ music, and not have to keep running to a church to practice on the organs there.

Being an engineer at heart, it wasn’t enough to just play the organ — I had to figure out how it all worked (both pipe and electronic).  In high school a friend (who also had a passion for organ) and I went to the principal and asked for money to build a small pipe organ for the school.  The principal was okay with it, but said we had to get buy-in from the orchestra, band and choir directors.  All three directors knew us, so it was no problem approaching them with our idea.  Two of the three were not a problem, but the band director had his eyes on a synthesizer, and if there was any money to be had, that’s where he wanted it spent. Now, I’d heard of synthesizers by now, but didn’t know much about them (as they didn’t seem like practical musical instruments unless you either owned a recording studio, or were in a rock band, or both).  Having learned everything about electronics that the high school could teach me by this point, I set about on an independent study to learn how synthesizers worked, and see if I could construct one for the school.  Whether fortunately or unfortunately, I graduated before getting TOO deep into this project!

When I headed down to Northfield to attend St. Olaf College, I had naturally planned to major in both music and engineering.  I quickly learned this wasn’t practical as they had almost NO courses in common… and I was getting interested in the computer area.  Time to rethink things.  St. Olaf didn’t have a computer science major (only a concentration), so what I ended up doing was a Sociology major, which was a subject which came fairly easy to me, and so I didn’t have to dedicate a huge amount of study time to it.  That allowed me to devote a great deal of time to the computer science concentration (both hardware and software), as well as spend countless hours in the electronic music studio (both in independent compositional studies, as well as enhancing the hardware on my own time).  It was during this time that I got the nickname of “The Wizard” for what I was doing both with electronic music as well as with the computer systems.

After graduating from St. Olaf, I still had a couple smaller synthesizers, but now had lost access to the recording facilities in the electronic music studio.  As I was devoting great quantities of time to learning all I could about Data General Corp. computers (and building my Bradley GT-II), working a full time job, and consulting on the side, my synthesizers stayed in their cases for pretty much the next 20 years.

In the early 2000′s, as I was leaving corporate and looking into what I was going to do next, ebay was also starting to come on the scene as more than just a site to trade antiques and collectibles.  I could now find all sorts of items (both synthesizers and sound gear) to complete my studio and get back to the music thing!

 

Bringing it All Together

No learning or knowledge is ever wasted, and that’s certainly the case here. Thought and thinking are absolutely paramount!  Thought is a very powerful thing [it’s been shown that in sensitive experiments, the thinking or expectations of the researcher can effect the outcome of the experiment].  If a person is going to shift or change, their thinking needs to change first… but how?  Sound!  Not just ANY sound, though.  You see, sound CAN BE a carrier-wave for consciousness (or thought / thinking), but it has to be the RIGHT sound to fit the thought and convey it.  To summarize:

You cannot truly change anything about your life until you change the way you think.
You cannot change the way you think until you engage the creative abilities of your right mind.
You cannot engage the right mind with left mind constructs (language and what we see).
The right sound, coupled with the right intention is the most effective (and perhaps the only) way to reach your right mind.

As I mentioned, I’m always striving to deliver on “better, faster and cheaper” for whoever I’m working with and whatever I’m doing.  Also, if you want me to go and do something, just tell me that “it can’t be done,” or “that’s impossible.”  Even if I don’t know how to do it today, I’ll be researching how to do it tomorrow.  I had proven to myself that perfect health is possible (and continue to prove it every day), but I found that people aren’t interested in that.  Maybe it’s too high a leap, or they’re too attached to their “conditions,” or… who knows.  They’ve got to take smaller steps on their way to better health — and there’s plenty of things blocking their way.  A person also has to get there in their own way on their own time — that’s why so many “self help” programs only work for a small fraction of people who use the program.

So I created some sound/music for people to listen to, which works with their right mind, and in doing so it unlocks new thinking which is right for that particular person.

I also created the “Sound Hypnosis” process, whereby I use specially created sounds in my hypnotherapy sessions, along with the words I’m speaking.  The sound not only reinforces what I’m saying (because the “music in the background,” so to speak, is mirroring my words), but conveys the consciousness (or intention) to the person’s mind.  Other hypnotherapists who’ve experienced Sound Hypnosis have called it the most powerful hypnosis they’ve ever experienced.  The clients just say, “Wow.”

 

Once a “Techie,” Always a Techie

So, it’s been a fun and interesting half a century plus!  I keep doing anything and everything I can to help people, and usually I have quite a bit of fun in the process.  [I try not to “work” and only have “fun,” although my fun is what a lot of people call work, so maybe it’s just how you look at it.]  Here’s a sample of what I’m presently up to:

• Building web sites for people.  Why?  Because most sites don’t do squat for people, and they deserve better.  There’s a lot of behind the scenes stuff that goes into building a web site that works.  Maybe someday I’ll write a book about it.
• Repairing electronics and computers which are repairable rather than tossing them in a landfill.  I’m not sure if I was born with a soldering iron in my hand, but I’ll be using mine as long as I’m breathing.
• Optimize and clean out people’s computers (PC only [and maybe it’s a Windows disease and Macs don’t have the issues]).  So many computers are still very usable for many years after people say they’re “too slow” and think they need a new one.  [I’m not a fan of “planned obsolescence.”]
• Low voltage wiring in homes and businesses (security systems, data, sound, video, etc.).  I’ll do high voltage as well if there’s no licensing issues involved.
• Converting books into Kindle format.
• Most any “handyman” project, including electrical, plumbing, carpentry, painting.
• Sound work in my studio.
• Multimedia, audio, video computer work.
• Repairing/reconditioning/restoring quadraphonic & stereo components (esp. Heathkits — see www.HeathkitStereo.com).
• … and then there’s time with my 2 awesome kids.
• Oh… and I’m not too bad a cook, either!

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