Joomla!

Well then.  It appears that you've arrived at my dusty little corner of the Internet.  This is the fourth iteration of my home web page.  Back in the day I wrote version 1.0 over a telnet terminal while doing a summer research project at ORNL.  It was pretty basic and over the years I've redesigned it several time (version 3.0 being an unfortunate experiment with Flash) and now I've arrived with a content management system that I like (Joomla) which I can combine with all the skills I've acquired over the last 15 years to make a pretty nice website.

I've finally gotten to the point where v4.0 isn't just a copy of the template from the website for our horse farm ,aka Shallow Hill Equestrian Center, (perhaps it should be called v4.1), I've added a blog, some pictures, the beginnings of a recipe database, and a partial restore of my old stories directory.

So then, a little about me.  My name is Carl Tracy and I'm a big nerd. I was born and raised in northeast Ohio (around Youngstown). I spent the majority of the 90s working on a B.S. and Ph.D. in physics. In 2000 I realized I was never going to actually get a job in physics, so I moved out to the east coast to be with my riding instructor girlfriend (now wife) Barb.  As it turns out, it was a pretty good choice, because I currently have one friend remaining in physics and the rest have moved on to greener pastures.  At most places that would not be a profound statement, but my incoming class at UIUC numbered in the 30-40 range (if I remember correctly).  An unfortunate state of affairs that I managed to avoid by getting a job in finance/insurance and and eventually Asset-Liability Management / Financial Risk Management.  I worked in Connecticut for several years before the whole "use all my vacation time to visit family" thing got really old.

So, in 2006 my wife and I moved back to Ohio.  It's wonderful to be back in the Midwest, especially when your spouse's chosen vocation is filled with lots of folks who will abuse and take advantage of you and requires rather sizable tracts of land to operate on your own.  So now I live on a 13 acre farm with 12 horses, 6 cats and a Lab / Weimaraner mix (which I would not particularly recommend to anyone that doesn't have 13 acres on which to run said dog).

So that's me.  Welcome!  Have a look around and enjoy, hopefully there will be more here soon!

 - Carl