... rand's web page

the obligatory personal stuff

rand

Obligatory Bio


I was born and raised in the mountains of North Carolina, in a small community in Ashe County.  Bordering Tennessee and Virginia, the area is home to the Church of the Frescos and an annual Christmas in July Festival (celebrating the county's Christmas tree industry), as well as a section of the New River that attracts fisherman and canoeists from all over.

I went to college in neighboring Boone in Wautauga County, attending Appalachian State University.  I took a year off from college and worked as a DJ in a local radio station (WKSK), a job that Clear Channel is trying to make obsolete. When I went back to school, I got a BS in Public and Applied History, a degree preparing you for a career using history in a non-traditional setting, such as a museum or archives.  My goal was to work in film and video preservation. Now, I'm now a computer consultant, so go figure.

There was something really special about spending most of my early life up "in the hills". I'm still a redneck mountaineer at heart, despite my filmmaking aspirations and love a good book or piece of music.  My interests range from high culture to low culture, from interesting local lore to geopolitics.  So, I suppose I'll wind up being the only person in my neighborhood who has a double-wide trailer with frequent showings of Kurosawa films in the living room.  (Hey, they're Eastern-Westerns anyway, right?).

After college, I worked for awhile as a bartender at the Triad International Airport -- a job, yes, that I could tell you stories about for days.  I started working there to get a schedule and money that would allow me to go back to college.  It didn't quite work out that way, but it was a heck of a time.  (King George Bush I's "Gulf War I" sort of put a damper on travel, so I was out of a job.) Some of the celebrities I met while working there include Lynda "Wonderwoman" Carter, Dennis Franz, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. (anyone remember him?), and Johnny Mathis.  Of course, there were all the pro wrestlers that came through the airport and my favorite encounter -- Kathleen Turner (ask me about the Barnaby Jones story).

Eventually, I wound up at Wake Forest University, working as an Academic Computing Consultant for the Art, Music, and Theater Departments.  I was at Wake Forest for about eight years and started the new millennium as an Academic Technology Consultant at Duke University.  In both jobs, I helped faculty figure out how to use technology in their teaching (which is a fancy way of saying it's a living until something better comes along).

These days, I'm pursuing screenwriting in my spare (?) time. Interested in moving to the Southwest US, perhaps even to the heart of the entertainment industry beast, Los Angeles or to a quiet rural setting somewhere in the high plains of New Mexico.

7.15.02/6.07.03