About

The story of my life thus far

Well, I wish it was a little more exciting than this is going to sound but that isn’t always a bad thing. I was born Richard L. Johnstun (yes, it’s just an L. and it doesn’t stand for anything…I thank my parents for that on occasion) in the Portsmouth Naval hospital in Portsmouth, VA in the month of June in the year of our lord 1974. I was born the son of career submariner and a stay at home mom who had two other children already tugging at her apron strings.

after my birth my father received orders to move from Virginia to the Naval ship yard in New London, CT. We spent a few years there when my father decided that he was done with the military life after over 20 years and it was time to move on to other things. They decided that California was the place we should be so we loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly…. uh… Tracy, CA. The city of Tracy is located about 70 miles straight east of San Francisco in the great San Joaquin valley (you know from that TV show “The Big Valley”? I never did run into Lee Majors though, that would have been way cool).

When we moved to the city of Tracy it was a slim ag community of some 8000 people (it was 80,000 20 years later…thank you silicon valley). My childhood was fairly uneventful. I was a rambunctious kid with a tendency to end up in the ER. I developed a passion for heavy metal music, cars and the great outdoors. I was always a less than stellar student even though my father commonly referred to me as Einstein as in, “That probably doesn’t seem like such a smart idea now, does it Einstein?”. Let’s just say that I was the slacker, unmotivated smart kid who knew more than was good for him and as a result his mouth got him in a lot of trouble.

I spent all of my formative years living in the lushly sun drenched valley of California blissfully ignorant of what really mattered in life. After I punched out of high school (just barely scraping by) I stepped foot into the working world full time. I wasn’t a lazy kid really, I’ve held a job since I was 12, I just wasn’t always really motivated. Well after a couple of false starts in life I ended up with a temp job working for a bank in a warehouse in Livermore, CA. This was a warehouse where they maintained ATM components, computers and the like. After an 18 month stint as a temp doing warehouse work I was hired on full time and moved into a technician job doing ATM and alarm system repair.

I guess I was good enough at being a technician because I was moved into a position providing tech support for other techs. After doing that for a couple of years I guess I was good at doing tech support because I was moved into a position as an instructor teaching classes to techs on how to fix stuff. Along here somewhere my boss hired a new Admin. Little did I know that in a few years that Admin would become my wife. About the time I started dating my wife another company purchased the division that I and my girlfriend worked for. Well, things kept progressing and I married an amazing woman named Laura on 9/9/05 and also got an awesome step-daughter out of the deal

Late in 2006 my wife was offered a position in Canton, OH. They agreed to let me keep my job as an instructor and work out of the main training facility in Canton as well. In late August of 2007 we packed up all of our stuff including the dog and drove 2500 miles to where we live today in Canton. It’s been an adjustment to say the least but not a bad one. Throughout my career and life I have traveled all over the United States and seen a lot of the country. Having spent a lot of time in the Canton area we both knew what we were in for. I guess I was pretty good at the teaching stuff because mid-2008 I was moved into a position as an “Instructional Designer”. Although I rarely teach any more I spend my time designing and developing training programs and content…it’s not a bad gig and it pays the bills

My step-daughter lives in Stockton, CA where she goes to college. My parents whom have somehow managed to remain married for 47 years are retired and living in Caldwel, ID. My brother is a computer engineer and lives with his wife and three children in New Castle, CA. My sister lives with her husband and son in Tracy, CA. I have a boat load of friends and relatives most all of whom live in Northern California and we try to visit them as often as possible.

I’m a true wire geek and PC head. We have 6 PCs in our home (and 3 gaming consoles) and only two of us live there. I’m also a fan of heavy metal music and attend as many live shows as I can. I still have a passion for cars but with the move I had to liquidate my toys and have not acquired any more as of late. I have a love of chicken wings like a zombie loves brains…hence the name of the website. I’m an avid reader with a fascination for apocalypse novels with a heavy dose of sci-fi and fantasy novels thrown in for good measure. I’m that geek that goes to Renaissance fares, owns comic books and plays video games….it’s worked out pretty well for me so far.