About
I’m a small town kid that has some big city past. I love to be outdoors as much as possible even in the middle of the beautiful winters here in Minnesota. I have a passion for hunting, fishing, and health.
Paul with Ontario Pike
Since I was a young boy I’ve always been crazy about fishing. I would sit on the end of the dock in the warm sunshine all day just content to take home a catch of panfish. Mom and Dad would help me eat them and they were fresh and delicious. Growing up in Baxter Minnesota near Brainerd, there was a plentiful supply of lakes and fish.
In the winter, I’ve always loved to sit out on the silent ice in the ice fishing shack with a warm wood stove crackling with life. I love when the northern pike appear and run with the bait. Now that was exciting.
I have fond memories of fishing in Ontario Canada and catching endless pike on a vacation with the uncles and cousins as well.
As I grew older, my curious mind always encouraged me to take things apart to see how they worked. They would seldom work as they had once I had completed dissecting the gadgets, but I learned as I tinkered. This led eventually to me creating small but fun homemade electronic and mechanical toys.
One of my early ways of making a few bucks was trapping. I used to run trap lines with my Dad for muskrat, beaver, and mink. We trapped a good quantity of muskrats and beavers. Back in those days, a muskrat fur brought a nice price. It was a great way for a kid to make a few bucks and enjoy the outdoors.
2008 Buck
I would always hunt for deer and ruffed grouse with my Dad in the fall seasons. Ruffed grouse is still one of my favorite birds for table fare, and it’s hard to beat spicy venison jerky!
My last job before leaving home in the 1980′s was a few summers working for Potlatch Paper. I did quite a few things for Potlatch including working on the railroad track crew, working on the yard crew, and hustling broke paper with a forklift. It was great pay and put me through my associate’s degree in college.
My first career after leaving home in the late 1980′s was as a candy cook. Cooking candy in a factory was like a real world Willie Wonka land. It included the need to taste the candy to assure the quality. This processed cured me of a sweet tooth for life.
After time as a cook, I decided to head back to school and get a degree in Electronics and Computer Systems. I graduated from NEI College of Technology and was nominated as an honor grad. At my honor grad review, I was asked where I saw myself in the next five years. I responded, “Going back to school.” This did not go over well with the faculty resulting in them not granting the full honor grad status. I went on to work for over 8 years as an electronics technician, and was a warranty repair tech for Sony, Canon, Hitachi, Panasonic, and other manufacturers. It was interesting and fun. A day of troubleshooting component level electronics was like solving puzzles.
Paul with Les Paul
I’ve played in several music groups ranging in styles from psych/dream-pop and ambient electronica to music with a western twang. Some of the groups are the Defective Infants, Shapeshifter, Ousia, and Di Dollari, and the current group Euphonograph.
Home studio recording has been a passion of mine as well for a long time. I started out young working with 4 track reel to reel machines such as a dokorder reel to reel. I worked with cassette 4 tracks as well. Since then I’ve upgraded to a decent home studio incorporating a Soundcraft Ghost 24 channel recording console paired up with a Tascam HD 24 digital deck.
The past 10+ years has found me in a career in software engineering. My focus has been mainly on Java, web application development, industrial automation, and mobile development (specializing in android). This has become a real passion for me. I am a senior level JEE/J2EE web application developer and Java software engineer with experience in diverse technologies and with a wide range of skills and am strong in all steps of the software development life cycle. I’ve found that I am extremely fast at adapting new skills and have strong problem solving skills.
Paul Horn Programming a Robot
My Philosophical Approach to Design: Over-engineering will be avoided to remove unnecessarily complex architectures which result in costly systems. Greater complexity up front means more code to write and maintain, more potential for bugs, more delay in demonstrating functionality to users, and a greater chance of failure at a greater cost.
I’ve had years as a senior consultant leading interesting projects across the US and have spent the last years as a full time employee working in health care related industries. I’ve played the roles of architect and engineer on countless successful high performance web based and desktop applications that have provided great business improvements and increased productivity.
I’ve also done many projects as an independent consultant writing software to run in industrial applications and controlling robotics controls.