Hi, I'm Andy West, computer geek, and welcome to the home page for andy.west.name.
I live in a beige-sided bungalow with a lawn that turns into a moat after a heavy rain.
I once had a large tortoise-shell colored cat named Isis. She was happy not to share a house with the five other cats where she used to live. But she passed away on the first week of May 2009 after a progressive illness.
The house was remodelled not too long ago. Its walls are white. Its cabinets are white. The carpet on the floors are white, especially after I have shampooed them after my cat passed on.
That house is in Fairmount, a town of twenty-nine hundred people in east central Indiana. Its claim to fame is actor James Dean, who lived his high-school years here and now (as it were) dwells among us. We celebrate him in our annual town festival every last weekend in September. His old high school is just three hundred meters from where my folks live; I used to go there when it was a middle school. It had been saved from the brink of collapse; but its intended remodelling has never come to pass, and it is likely to be torn down in time.
During the 1980's I was a professional student at Ball State, working part-time as a bookstacker for its Bracken Library, finally graduating with a bachelor's degree. After various odd jobs I worked as a computer technician for a Muncie bank for over eight years. Then the Bank gave me the boot in late 2003. It was painful at first, but that firing turned out to be the best thing that happened to me. I found better work at Ball State's Bracken Library.
The position has evolved into part computer maintenance and part development work. I tend the public and staff printers and the Apple Mac equipment. I also do miscellaneous Web projects such as the Cardinal Scholar repository and the University Libraries toolbars for Internet Explorer and Firefox.
As a hobby I work on my computer at home. This takes up so much of my time that I need a separate page to expound on it. A side-effect of my hobby is technical support for my folks and for my two sisters, the teacher (who gave me Isis) and the freelance editor.
As a computer geek I juggle several Web sites like this one, this one, and this one) as well as blog for which this site is a repository for past entries. There used to be a LiveJournal blog, but I dropped that after deciding that its owners were objectionable. This site holds its past entries, too.
I also read books; I listen to NPR and Internet radio (esp. SOMA FM); and I watch animé (a taste I acquired from my editor sister) and Doctor Who.
My personal Web site includes the Caitlin Clarke Page, the web site dedicated to one of America's best stage actresses. It's a memorial site now, for Ms. Clarke passed away from ovarian cancer on 9 September 2004.