A Bit About Me

In 2008, I wrapped up working for the REI Outdoor School. For the south bay school, I am the primary instructor for the navigation classes: GPS, Map and Compass, Geocaching, Backcountry Navigation for GPS, and Advanced GPS. Here's what some of my students have written on their feedback forms:

"David was an incredible instructor. Not just for his enthusiasm and knowledge, but he knew his audience - what might be interesting, confusing, etc. The right level of info was given in the right way." - Anonymous

"David is excellent. Good balance between theory and practice. Very patient, encouraging and knowledgeable." - Aaron D.

"... Your instructors, Dave and Evan, were truly outstanding. Both were very professional, considerate and fully prepared to educate us that day. Since we were so impressed with Dave and Evan, we thought it would be great to reward them with a little something at the end of the outing. They very graciously declined our tips and told us our satisfaction with the program was more than enough reward for them. Such gentlemen! We highly commend Dave and Evan for their overall performance." - C. A.

And from our market manager: "Dave has averaged a 4.92 (out of 5) score on evaluations over the year, which is especially exceptional given that he has had the most (>500) evaluations of any instructor. Students regularly single him out for praise in the evaluation notes, have signed up for outings primarily based on his presence, and have written me personally to praise his work." (Aw, shucks!)

Before REI, I spent seven years at IBM working on several websites, and before that I was with Taligent for about five years. At IBM, I received several minor awards, as well as a major award from the IBM Software Group division for Technical Leadership Excellence. I've recently completed 13 months of contracting at a cool VoIP company. Since I like to accomplish things and I'm not independently wealthy, I'm looking for another great tech job!

I've been a volunteer with a small local Search and Rescue team for about fifteen years now, although most of last year I was on Leave of Absence while I concentrated on my job and such. As of January, 2009 I'm active again.

I enjoy continuing my education. I hold certificates for several FEMA independent study courses including Emergency Program Manager and Radiological Emergency Management. I completed Project Management Fundamentals, Leadership in a Project Team Environment and various other technical courses when I worked at IBM. At different times I've been certified in First Aid, CPR for the Professional Rescuer, First Responder, AED, Oxygen, and Wilderness First Aid.

As of May, 2009 I've started to look for a new job. I'm working with some smart folks on an interesting web project on the side, which has been a lot of fun so far. I'm also started research on a new personal project which conveniently would involve people paying me money.

Outdoors

I love hiking and backpacking, although I can never do either as often as I'd like to. Along those lines, my Henry Coe Backcountry Weekend reference page includes distances, times, and coordinates based on previous visits and published sources. Also included are GPS track logs in GPX format and AnalyzeTrack summaries.

Here's a link to our local geocaching website, Geocachers of the Bay Area (GBA). I am a founding member, and one of the volunteer site admins. And this is my Geocaching profile page, assuming that the geocaching.com website is actually functioning...

I've been a member of the CA4WDC for something like six or seven years now. Please Tread Lightly.

Ham Radio by N6XE

I obtained my FCC ham radio Technician class license as KE6QKZ in 1995, thanks to the ham radio club at Stanford University. In early 2007 I passed the General exam test. After a few additional weeks of study, I then passed the final test and upgraded to an Extra class license and the N6XE callsign.

I really enjoy HF & DX although I've not been active much the last year or so. I have an Icom IC-718 which I use with an Alpha Delta DX-EE antenna.

When I bought my Yaesu FT-7800 I used the FTB7800 software to manage the memories and other settings. Based on what looked potentially useful to me here in San Jose, I created a listing of over a hundred local 2m/70cm repeaters for my radio. It was made with my personal use in mind, but I exported a CSV file of the repeaters that may save others the time of entering them by hand. They are all shown as open repeaters, mostly in the Bay Area.