While working in Japan during the late 80s, the Japanese I was working with began calling me the "cowboy" because I wore brown rough-out boots to work on the week-ends and at night when we worked late. The "Cowboy" name stuck professionally and also reflected my approach to working in a high tech industry where in many cases, I didn't always take the business school approach to solving problems.
Being raised on a farm in the Little Dixie area of southeast Okla. and being small physically, I always had to use my head and leverage in solving problems whether in a physical role or intellectually. After joining the IBM Corporation after college, I learned how to compete and was used to fight technical fires for the duration of my 28 years that I was employed there. During this time, some of the cowboy mentality came out as could be seen while I was attending the Systems Research Institute in New York City which was IBM's technical charm school. In one of the management classes that I took, the days discussion was what factors should be used in hiring new employees. After hearing the typical suggestions of the high profile university, high grade point, advanced degrees, published, etc., I thought I would throw a little farm realism into the discussion. When I volunteered that I would take someone who "had an IQ of 100 and was hungry" the class erupted into an uproar. The majority of the class understood what I was saying, but the professor was NOT amused and let me know such.
As you may gather from the fact that I own and operate this site, I have a love and respect for guns and knives. My great grand father on my mothers side of the family was one of the best known sportsman in the part of the country where he lived. His son who was my Grandfather was also a dedicated hunter and fisherman. Growing up on the farm, we raised our own chickens, pork, and beef and did almost all of our butchering and processing. My appreciation for a sharp quality knife was born there. I butchered my first hog by myself without any adult supervision when I was 14.
Since the family was "poor" by many standards, I learned from an early age that
if you took care of your pennies, the dollars would take care of themselves. If you
take time to read any of my blogs, you'll realize that I am very conservative in many
ways and will take up for the little guy as long as he/she is honest. I do have some
favorite lines that I think would help get a picture of who I am. They include:
To see me and my trophy, take a look at
the onhunting blog.
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