About Kevin
I'm an electrical engineer (BSEE '92, MSEE '94) and have lived in Cincinnati, Houston, and Madison (WI) before moving to our current home in Austin, Texas.Madison and Austin are tied for my favorite places to live. Both are progressive cities with a high quality of life. Madison has fewer opportunities for technologists and a much smaller music scene, but it also lacks the sprawl and congestion that's overwhelming Austin. And it's cold there. Brrrrr.
I've had a lifelong interest in both music and electronics. In graduate school I pursued those interests by studying electroacoustics and signal processing (and was fortunate enough to have a really great advisor, Richard "Doc" Greiner). I've played a number of musical instruments but can't say I excelled at any of them. Right now I'm taking lessons for drum set.
My first job after college was designing firmware for audio noise cancellation with a (now defunct) company named Digisonix. In 1996 I moved to Austin to take a position with a 15-person IC design company named Oasis Design. At Oasis I worked on many different things, including embedded software, audio signal processing, digital IC design, production test, and information technology. They grew to about 70 people in the USA and merged with a similarly sized company in Germany. In early 2005, the combined companies were acquired by SMSC.
SMSC appeared to be a well run
company and a good place to work, but my heart wasn't in it anymore. In
October 2005 I left to research opportunities in the fields of alternative energy or assistive technology. I am currently working on an educational web site and researching the marketability of an improved thermal controller.
In my spare time I usually have several do-it-yourself projects involving the house or cars, or you'll find me researching things on the web just for the joy of learning. One of my favorite things to do is to travel and explore someplace new with Kay; our photo albums will show some of these trips.