I've always had an interest in electronics and stereo/audio components. Back in my teenage years I started out fiddling around with car audio, and managed to learn many of the ins and outs of that trade (mostly at the amateur DIY level) but nontheless, got a feel for the concepts involved.
I have been into music for as long as I can remember. In 10th grade I started my first band (as drummer) with a group of friends from school. By the time I joined the Navy at the age of 24, I was on my fifth band, we had recorded a CD and toured most of the eastern and midwest. So I have a great deal of interest in live audio as well, amps, processors, mic and PA systems, but I've been out of the loop on that for a considerable amount of time.
During my time in the Navy, stationed aboard an aircraft carrier as a Nuclear operator, I built a jalopy of a HT system in our maintenance/spare parts room out of an old dry-erase board (not the best reflective surface mind you, but it did the job), some old speakers that had been donated by my shipmates, powered by a crappy Insignia 6.1 receiver with the standard HTIB sub. By most folks' standards here they would have cringed, but it made those long 6 month deployments bearable when out to sea and nothing else to do in your free time.
Fortunately, the dry erase board measured 72" across diagonally and had a near perfect 4:3 aspect ratio for the old training projector we used. (Back before all the newer HD projectors started hitting the market).
After the Navy I took a job as an A/V integration specialist with a company based out of my home town. Worked my way up to Crew Chief, and became a Certified Technology Specialist via Infocomm's training program, which is the only such program to adhere to and be recognized by ISO criteria. I did hundreds of jobs, both in the A/V and broadcast market, all commercial installations - no residential. I loved the job, and was making decent money, but not quite enough, and the travel was killing my home life (wife did not like me being gone so much).
Nowadays I work as a consultant for the commercial power industry, and I helped rebuild my company's network infrastructure, and also built a multipoint videoconferencing system (Polycom) to connect all three branch offices, all located in seperate states. My job is no longer A/V related, so it's been relegated to a hobby again at this point, but I still have a great deal of passion for the art, and get bored when I have no new equipment to install in my own HT, or no new tweaks to be done!
