I noticed you haven’t told us who you work for. Why?
My employer is very sensitive about people writing about anything work related on their blogs. While they don’t have a no-blogging policy, they don’t exactly embrace the idea of all their employees being bloggers either. As such, the safest course seems to be to keep my employment info to myself so I can be a little more free about what I say. What I will say is that I work as a Systems Engineer in a for-profit company and my customers are in the world of K-12 Education.

Where did you come up with the Minnesota Geek name for your site?
It was really simple. I live in Minnesota. I’m a geek. The domain name was available. There is nothing more to it than that.

What is your favorite Operating System?
You can probably guess by reading my posts that I’m a big fan of macOS. I’ve used, and am perfectly comfortable with all flavors of Windows as well as several flavors of Linux, but my favorite is still macOS. It gives me the best of all worlds. I can run mainstream software like Microsoft Word, yet I can also goof around with open source stuff, play at the command line, write scripts, etc. In addition, the multimedia apps available for macOS are amazing and everything else pales by comparison.

There is quite a bit of stuff here about airplanes, but you never mention flying these days. What gives?
I do have my private pilot’s license. I’m very proud of that. I love airplanes and I love flying. The unfortuante reality is that flying is a very expensive hobby. When I chose to buy a new house and a new car, I had to make the choice to give up the flying. There just wasn’t enough income coming into my pocket to justify that kind of cost. I don’t like that — but that’s life.

So you like photography, huh? Nikon or Canon?
Right now I’m a Nikon guy. At the time I bought my first digital SLR, the entry level bodies that were on the market were slightly better on the Nikon side of things, so I bought Nikon. I’ve been very happy with the result so far, but I’m sure I’d have been just as happy with Canon gear as well. My current camera is a Nikon D7000 and D7100body. I have a variety of different lenses and flashes to go with those two bodies, including a Nikkor F2.8 70-200 and a Nikkor F3.5-5.6 18-200. I’ve also used a D40x and a D200 in the past, but those are now retired. I also shoot a lot with my iPhones of various flavors.

Whats’s with all the stuff about animals?
I love animals — all different types. Over the years I’ve had dogs, cats, birds, iguanas, horses, donkeys, llamas, goats, mice, guinea pigs, and fish. I’ve enjoyed them all. The number of animals I have at one time varies depending on what is going on in my life at the time. At the max, I had 18 animals that were my responsibility. While I don’t have that many right now, I see more animals in my future. I particularly have a fondness for animals with special needs or animals that are rescues.