The Short Version

After serving in the Navy and various military contractors, Geoff decided to form his own company. Now that he is retired, he has kept the name but closed the business. MRA is now just a website promoting the various outreach programs that he and Kimberly conduct.

The Long Version

Geoff graduated from Miami University on a four year NROTC scholorship. He served in various capacities in the Navy, culminating his career as the Operations Officer for a Navy Frigate - chasing submarines for a living.

Following the Navy, Geoff was hired by Electric Boat - a builder of submarines, and he enjoyed his assignments as technical supervisor on trainers being built and then in the Submarine Advanced Technology Program. However, the closing of the program forced Geoff to look for work elsewhere and after some stints with local contractors, the closing of the Navy Undersea Warfare Lab in New London and a new life in the family caused Geoff to realize that work at home was a superb lifestyle enhancement.

Geoff quickly found that business could quite literally overwhelm him and he kept his business low key. But he has always been busy. Projects he has undertaken range from consulting and programming on advanced electromagnetic analysis programs, to researching high tech solutions for the construction world, to developing small and large web sites for businesses and organizations.

Human Factors is a field which is little known, but has tremendous ramifications for people. As an example in the America we think of red as being a danger color, while in China it is considered good luck. But Human Factors covers more than colors - it also includes placement of interactive objects and how people perceive and interact with them.

Geoff has been a member of the professional society - Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) for eighteen years. He relies on the Special Interest Group Computer Human Interaction (SIG-CHI) for much of his human factors foundation as well as having worked with Human Factors specialists.

Preparing courses for the Motif programming language was an early endeavor for Geoff. Motif is a popular toolkit for developing programs under Unix (tm) and Linux. Geoff has always felt training was extremely important and needs only to reflect on his experience at Electric Boat to prove that training could have saved tens of thousands of dollars in wasted programmer effort.

Creating compliant sites is a passion for Geoff. He endeavors to make the web accessible for all persons. Sites he develops utilize proper XHTML Coding and he certifies each and every page so that a site's contents can be seen by all browsers. For certification he uses the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) the authority on web languages.

Geoff has been active in the local Small And Home Office Association (SAHOA) group, even preparing and delivering testimony to the state legislature on Micro-business issues. He has written numerous articles for the SAHOA Voice, the group's newsletter, covering a multitude of computer related topics.

In the past several years, Geoff has become involved in Civil War reenacting. Attending Gettysburg twice convinced him that the Navy side of events is all but lost. Since then Geoff has been collecting artifacts, uniform accessories, and creating his talks. The recent discovery of the existence of the U.S.S. Alligator is sending shock waves through historians of the Civil War. Indeed, through the efforts of the Navy and Marine Living History Association, the Alligator has been declared the U.S. Navy's first submarine. He is also writing a series of books on the life of a Navy officer whose first command is in the Civil War. and transcribing the Official Records of the US Navy in order ease reading and researching of the naval side of the war

Geoff's presentations to school children are relatively short, but detailed. An emphasis on describing an artifact, and allowing students to touch, for instance, half-dimes, reinforces what and how money was handled in earlier times. Geoff is constantly amazed by the questions that the children come up with.

Community involvement for Geoff is a major portion of his spare time. Having served on the boards of several groups, and president of the the Norwich Heritage Trust, helps keep him active in the affairs of Norwich. Under his leadership important landmarks in Norwich are being preserved.

A recent project had Geoff converting audio/visual slide presentations to digital movies for the Norwich Historical Society of which he was on the board and the Communications Director.

Geoff and his wife bought their 1852 A.J. Downing Gothic Italianate home and have been working on it since 1990. Every room in the house was an "I can fix that" room. Now some 25 years later, the parlor has been restored and most of the rooms have had at least some sort or makeover. But it's still a work in progress.

Geoff has been in the Girl Scouts for over 15 years. He has been with Girls Scouts of Connecticut as a leader and astronomy club co-founder. He is also a Boy Scout Astronomy Counselor.

Geoff and Kim are now both volunteers Rangers for The Last Green Valley (tlgv.org) and conduct numerous programs in astronomy and letterboxing, as well as promoting the wonderful 35 town area of The Last Green Valley

How Geoff and Kim can help the media

• Geoff and Kim can give talks on any of the above subjects or supply articles concerning them.
• Geoff and Kim can give you access to other experts that may have answers to your questions.

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