I've been working for Devon County Councils (DCC) ICT department for nearly 12 years now, mostly in the Installations Team which consists of 5 permanent members of staff and usually one or more contracted staff. The role of the Installations Team is to install new Telephony and IT equipment within the Councils ICT infrastructure which consists of the main County Hall campus along with a large number of satellite sites all over Devon. This includes bringing new or existing dial-up only sites onto the DCC wide area network (WAN) by providing them with their own local area network (LAN) and a high speed link back to the central backbone at County Hall, it can also include more basic jobs such as setting up and installing desktop PC's, laptops and network printers. Recently I have become more involved with the telephony side of the network and have been asked to oversee the migration of a number of sites from older BT Meridian private exchanges (PABX) to newer Siemens Realitis private exchanges, which I will be working on this year (2005). The aspect that I like most about my job is the fact that it entails a fair amount of travelling, which means I am not stuck in an office all day and am able to enjoy the picturesque Devon scenery as I drive around either in our car or on my motorbike. 

As far as hobbies go my main interest is in tinkering with our computer and playing computer games, primarily Microsoft's new Flight Simulator X which you can read up on from my Computer page. Having spent time on simulated aircraft I've become quite interested in the real thing and have invested in an airband scanner which I use to listen to Exeter Control Tower and the aircraft using Exeter airport, either at home or at the airport which is about 5 minutes away. Carol & I are due to have an hours flight in a Cessna 172R in the next few weeks and I'm considering a few further flights with the possibility of going for a Private Pilots License. I have always liked animals and you can read up a bit more on this if you explore this site and follow the links. I enjoy photography, the majority of photo's on this site have been taken by myself either with my old 35mm SLR or our new Cannon A75 digital camera. As a couple Carol and I enjoy walking together, there are a number of walks at the back of our house, probably our favourite and longest is to Poltimore as this takes you through the middle of working farms, past quaint thatched cottages and Poltimore House which has had a long and varied history. Follow the link on the Home page for some photo's taken whilst out walking. I still enjoy motorcycling, as I have done since I was 16, you can read up on the bikes I've had by following the link below. I enjoy cooking, and grow a selection of chillies each year to add whenever Carol isn't looking (not a big fan of hot foods). I also like to go sea fishing, Exmouth has a number of charter boats that do day trips, I try to go 3 - 4 times a year, I've caught some unusual fish - a Red Gurnard and a Cuckoo Wrasse both of which are very attractive. I also like to go to Exmouth to collect fresh cockles & mussels and cook them up in white wine and plenty of parsley.