Norm's Homepage

My main sport is tenpin bowling.  Visit my bowling page for my bowling history, my current leagues and some of my favorite bowling links.

I am a retired mechanical engineer.  Most of my working life was spent at the David Taylor Model Basin (its old name, which I prefer).  While there, I became interested in computers and computer programming for test data analysis and for sonar search and detection simulations, mainly using Fortran.  I don't consider myself a real computer programmer.  I was a pretty good Fortran programmer for the requirements of my projects but I didn't concern myself with many other applications or, to a great extent, with other languages.

Since I retired, I have enjoyed working with several generations of desktop computers, 8080, 8088, 286, 386, 486 and Pentium, and with many operating systems, DOS (various versions), Windows 3.1, 95 and 98.  Most of my post-employment endeavors have involved membership or subscriber lists and other databases, programmed in CBasic, a compilable Basic.  I used an internal record linking procedure which I devised.  Later, when I upgraded to 286, I worked a lot with DBase3 and its Basic-like programming language.

My program for the NIH Golf Association is, essentially, a membership database with provisions for storing scores hole-by-hole, computing and storing gross, net and adjusted scores, handicaps, team scores and for reporting team standings and individual winners for each outing.  I programmed it first in CBasic and later reprogrammed it in Visual Basic.  Recently, I added the reporting of results and handicap lists in HTML format for the NIHGA website and for e-mailing to team captains.

Programming for the web is another interesting activity.  The NIHGA website was my first project in order to get it ready for the start of the 1998 season in April.  The website and e-mail have greatly improved communications within the club.  So far, I have been concerned with the content of my web pages.  Soon, I will try to improve the graphics and to see what Java can do for me.

I am 77 years old and have been retired for quite a while.  I have four well-adjusted, happily-married children, born between 1955 and 1959, and twelve grandchildren.  The Family page is incomplete at this point, but should have more information in the future.

I moved from Derwood, MD to Frederick, MD in 1995 to be nearer my significant other person, Della Shatto.  The move got me out of my four bedroom house and grounds which I no longer had the time or inclination to maintain properly and it saved me the frequent sixty mile round trip between Derwood and Frederick.

I enjoy several forms of competitive activities, tenpin bowling, chess, golf, bridge and tennis.  My bowling and chess activities are described in those pages.

I love golf but my golf handicap has slipped from about 14, when I was younger, to about 22.  I can play some good holes but putting 18 good holes together is becoming elusive.  I, somehow, manage to miss-hit a few more shots and miss more putts than I used to.  But the challenge keeps me coming back.

Della and I, usually, play golf at least once a week, sometimes every day when we went to South Carolina, but her main sports interest is tennis. We play doubles together, occasionally, but I haven't played very often in the past year because I had trouble with my right wrist and I want to keep it in the best possible shape for bowling.