John A. Colley's bio I have spent 25 years in the computer field. I started out working on DEC PDPs, VAXes, and Xerox Mainframes in the early 80's as a field engineer. My principal job was maintaining and repairing all processors and associated peripheral devices, to include multivendor networking gear, tape drives, disk drives, line printers, and a wide variety of terminal devices around the Washington, DC area.

That was an era when we could actually replace the R/W heads on the disk drives, and the tape drives were the size of refrigerators. An oscilloscope was part of my field engineerís tool kit, along with alignment packs and mater skew tapes. The computer rooms were the size of football fields and I never had to worry about the hot humid days on the east coast.

Over the past 25 years I've had the privilege of working at NIST, NRL, NASA, DTNSRDC, NSWC, NADC, all while supporting our country in ways I never dreamed of as a young HAM operator in the 70's. Amateur radio then was the Internet of today and communications is my true passion no matter what the medium happens to be.

As business and government becomes increasingly reliant on the Internet, data and network security is becoming a major concern. To meet that demand for qualified security experts, I am currently enrolled in the Information Security program at the College of Southern Maryland. My projected graduation date is Fall of 2010. When I complete my formal education, I want to combine my solid experience with my new skills to meet the challenges of the 21st Century Information Society.