Please be patient; I know this page takes a long time to load, and I plan to fix it when I have the time. Meanwhile, I have set up the page so all the links open in a new window. I personally find that to be annoying, but I have come to realize that it's better than waiting for this page to reload every time you come back to it. And you will come back.

Wayne Lee Clark, 1942-1999
Spater... und wieder bye bye.

Welcome!

to David Streeter's home page.

Isn't this clock neat? (If you're running Internet Explorer, it isn't neat at all; it's a dead picture.) For the 20 seconds that it runs when this page first loads (or reloads), it's as accurate as it can be, given the nature of the internet. It's not running off your system clock. To learn more or get one of these for your page (any time zone in America), visit the U.S. Naval Observatory's official time page. Lots of really neat stuff and lots of boring stuff, too. (The Naval Observatory is also the official residence of "Vice President" Dick Cheney, who thinks the navy should pay his electric bill.)

So who is David Streeter?

Basically, he's a guy who thinks he doesn't have nearly as much fun as he should.

I'm the Audio/Visual technician at Naperville North High School, which pays diddly, which is why I don't have enough fun. Naperville North was (he's retired now) the employer of Lee Marek, star of numerous episodes of The Late Show with David Letterman and chemistry teacher extraordinaire. He (and a writer) came out with a book/kit, Lee Marek's Soakin' Science. It's full of balloons and tubes and other things to help a kid get really wet (and maybe learn something, too). (By the way, Naperville North is in District 203. The (in)famous Neuquah Valley, the school which made the national news in August of 1997 when it opened at a cost of $65 million, is in District 204, which includes parts of Aurora, Plainfield, and Bolingbrook besides a part of Naperville.)

In the fall of 2003, I started a web site for my union, the Naperville Educational Support Professionals Association. After months of tough negotiations and the threat of a strike, we reached a deal which gave me a raise of $0.04 per hour the first year, effective 2 months into the year. In 2007, my salary will be $1900 more than it was in 2003.

These were my cats Dyna, Nero, and Berry.

Dyna crossed the Rainbow Bridge on September 25, 2001.
Nero joined her in the early morning of February 15, 2002.
Berry followed on January 20, 2005.

Click here to hear Nero purr.

And speaking of animals, here's my saga about The Easter Bunny from Hell. This experience led me to a kids' book called

Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery.
I'd never heard of it before, but it's great (for adults, too). It has about six sequels now, but I haven't read any of them (yet).

So what do I do for fun?

I'm the webmaster (and past president, vice president, and secretary) of Little "Q" Model Railroad Club.
I also belong to the Chicago Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society, but I've never held an office there.
For more discussion of trains, point your newsreader to misc.transport.rail.americas or rec.models.railroad. For a while, I was almost addicted to a game/simulator called Train Dispatcher. Only the start of carpal tunnel symptoms broke that habit.

Speaking of games, while I generally support the popular theory about buying the products of the evil empire of Mr. Bill, I couldn't resist "Revenge of Arcade" because it contains the all-time greatest video arcade game, Ms. Pac-Man. Not Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man. And it's not a cheap computer simulation of the real thing, either. It's the actual arcade game machine code read off the ROM chips. Includes the bugs the arcade game had, too.

Do I have any interest in sports? In a word, no. Well, that's not quite true. I'm a die-hard fan of the Chicago Cubs, but I don't get horribly depressed when they lose (if I did, I'd need Prozac). But I simply don't care about the Bears (although I'm happy they booted McCaskey upstairs; it'll keep him out of the news), Bulls (now if only someone would do something about Rhinestone, as my mother calls him), White Schlox (Rhinestone and Tinhorn), Blackhawks, Wolves, or Fire (which, while Soldier field was being turned into an ugly monstrosity, played here in Naperville at my parents' alma mater, North Central College). When the Kane County Cougars first started playing, I used to go to a few games (especially when they played the Cubs' farm team), but they got too popular and it's impossible to get tickets any more. [Rant: When JFK Jr. died, I very quickly got tired of the excessive news coverage. Nevertheless, I found it extremely disturbing that the first thing that was able to push it out of the top story slot in Chicago was when the Bears fired their quarterback.]

Besides trains, I'm also into ham radio (General class N9JFE), but not as heavily as I'm into trains.

I'm also a slightly burned out Star Trek fan. My special interest in Star Trek is in the trivia, both of the internal workings of things (history of the Federation, how transporters work, etc.), and the behind-the-scenes details of the production. If you know what to look for, there are also a lot of inside jokes and references to other sci-fi, although many of them can't be seen on TV. For example, at least one Federation starship had engines designed and built by Yoyodyne Propulsion, the company in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. A great deal of this trivia can be found in the many books that have been written about Star Trek and its several incarnations. The first one I bought was

	The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion, which has a summary of each episode with the Stardate, original air date, cast list, and production notes. I bought the 1st edition, which ended with Season 5; it was updated after "Generations" came out and again after "Nemesis." If "Nemesis" turns out to really be the last film, I might buy the 3rd edition just for completeness' sake.		The Star Trek Chronology: The History of the Future is a nice, concise history of every event known to have occurred in the Star Trek universe. I bought the first edition; a revised edition came out in 1996.
	The Star Trek Encyclopedia is a large volume containing information about almost every object or character that has ever appeared in Star Trek, but it doesn't go into much detail about the episodes. Again, I have the original; the updated version includes "Insurrection."		The Making of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (out of print, but Amazon offers you a used copy) is a slightly different kind of book. It's a study of how the series was launched, how the characters were developed, how the sets, costumes, and ships were designed, etc. It only has an episode list as an appendix, but it's a fascinating read (and it tells you about the funniest joke in the universe!).
	A similar type of book is Star Trek, The Next Generation: The Continuing Mission: A Tenth Anniversary Tribute, which, obviously, was written after the series ended.		An altogether different kind of reference is Legends of the Ferengi, by Quark as told to Ira Steven Behr and Robert Hewitt Wolfe (Star Trek staff writers/producers/somethingorothers). It contains a short essay on the origins of each of the 76 (if I counted right) Rules of Acquisition which had been revealed to the Federation at the time of its publication, and it's truly hilarious.
	Also very funny are a couple of novels: How Much for Just the Planet? by John M. Ford, highly recommended to fans of old movies (was out of print, but was reprinted in 1999 -- hooray!), and		Q-In-Law by Peter David, featuring the engagement of Q to Lwaxana Troi. It's now out of print, but it's available for download in Microsoft Reader format. The audio version is perhaps even better -- it's read by John DeLancie and Majel Barrett and the sound effects greatly enhance the story.

You have to be careful with Star Trek novels -- some of them are excellent while others aren't worth a plate of dead gakh.

Other science fiction I like is Dr. Who (which has a few newsgroups with some REALLY weird people in them), and that of the late Douglas Adams. Adams' work includes the five books of the Hitchhiker's trilogy,

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe,

Life, the Universe and Everything,

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, and

Mostly Harmless.

His other science fiction includes

	Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (out of print), which is kind of moody (and borrows a major character from Adams' unfinished Dr. Who episode, Shada),		and its hilarious sequel The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.
	I tried to read Starship Titanic, cowritten with Terry Jones, but my attention span was too short at the time. I'll try it again sometime.
	At the time of his death, Douglas was working on a new book to be called The Salmon of Doubt. It started out to be the third book of the Dirk Gently series, but he was thinking about converting it into the sixth Hitchhiker's book instead. After he died, his editor compiled the best of the chapters he had written, added some of Douglas's other writings (letters to newspapers, magazine articles, speeches, etc.), and published it as The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time.

Maybe sometime I'll find the time to start reading the newsgroup alt.fan.douglas-adams again. Be sure to check out his game company's web page.

I'm also a big fan of Tom Clancy's novels. In the order of publication, these are

The Hunt for Red October a Soviet ballistic missile submarine is defecting to America		Red Storm Rising a non-nuclear World War III in Europe with 1980s military technology
Patriot Games Irish terrorists come to America on a personal vendetta		The Cardinal of the Kremlin spies convey information about the American and Soviet missile defense systems
Clear and Present Danger CIA declares war on Columbian drug lords		The Sum of All Fears after the U.S. engineers peace in Israel, Islamic and other terrorists try to start a holocaust by exploding a nuclear bomb at the Super Bowl
Without Remorse a former Navy Seal declares war on drug dealers during the Vietnam War		Debt of Honor a Japanese businessman declares war on the United States
Executive Orders a new President must deal with a biological attack on the United States amid political flack		Rainbow Six a new international antiterrorist squad handles various incidents, while rabid environmentalists declare war on the human race
The Bear and the Dragon a major conflict results from basic cultural differences between China and other countries		Red Rabbit a KGB communications officer learns of a plot to assassinate the pope and decides to defect
	The Teeth of the Tiger a private organization takes the war on terrorism into its own hands

In order of the internal chronology of the events in these stories, Without Remorse is first, Patriot Games is second, and Red Rabbit is third, then all the others in the order they were published, with one exception: Red Storm Rising is totally separate from all the other books, with no shared characters or events. It was co-written by Larry Bond, who also has several other novels. The only one I've read is

Red Phoenix, about a Second Korean War. Clancy's books take you into aircraft, tanks, ships, subs, and the high commanders' heads, but in Red Phoenix, Bond takes you to one more place: into the trenches with ordinary infantry soldiers for a taste of the sheer terror of war.

Other books I've read in the war/technothriller genre include

	Team Yankee: a Novel of World War III by Harold Coyle -similar to Red Storm Rising, but focusing on one tank company		Flight of the Old Dog by Dale Brown -a top-secret B52 test bed for several new weapons is pressed into combat during an emergency; it has a couple of sequels, but I haven't read them yet
	Night Launch by Senator Jake Garn (out of print) -a terrorist hijacks a space shuttle		Storming Intrepid by Payne Harrison -the Soviet Union hijacks a space shuttle (a bit hokey, to my mind)
	Icefire by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens (also the authors of some of the "Star Trek" books listed above) -someone nukes Antarctica, creating a powerful soliton wave in the Pacific Ocean

One other thing about Clancy: the books listed above are only the ones he actually wrote. There are a number of other books with his name on them, including the "Op Center," "Politika," "Net Force," and "Power Plays" series, many of which are little more than hint books for his Redstorm game company's products. He didn't write these pieces of trash. Also, I do not share or endorse all of Mr. Clancy's political beliefs. On usenet, there are two newsgroups for Clancy fans. alt.books.tom-clancy is by far the most active one, but there is also alt.fan.tom-clancy. In them, you can find discussion of Clancy books, Clancy movies, other books and movies similar to Clancy's, and real-world events that relate to things in Clancy books and movies.

By the way, for reading newsgroups and email, I think Netscape sucks (and don't even ask me about Internet Explorer). I much prefer Forte Agent. (This is not a paid commercial announcement -- there are plenty of those on this page already.) For discussion of Agent and Free Agent, see alt.usenet.offline-reader.forte-agent. Although you won't find me there much anymore, I used to spend quite a bit of time reading and posting, which resulted in one of my posts being submitted to alt.humor.best-of-usenet on August 7, 1997.

By far the most fun I have, though, is in alt.fan.dave_barry, a group populated by truly strange people who write truly strange things, usually about boogers, Beano, the Hawley-Smoot Tariff (Smoot-Hawley, dammit!), and squirrels. Dave Barry won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1988 for his weekly column in the Miami Herald, which is about various major issues relating to the international economy, the future of democracy, the social infrastructure and exploding toilets. Dave is taking 2005 off from writing his regular column, although he will write occasionally when the mood strikes him. Supposedly, he will return in 2006, but the pessimists of a.f.d_b (all of us) aren't counting on it.

He also has a gaggle of books out. In no particular order, the ones I've read, partially read, heard abridged or unabridged versions of on tape, or intend to read just as soon as I can find the time, are

Dave Barry in Cyberspace	Dave Barry Does Japan	Claw Your Way to the Top: How to Become the Head of a Major Corporation in Roughly a Week
Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need	Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs (out of print)	Babies and Other Hazards of Sex: How to Make a Tiny Person in Only 9 Months With Tools You Probably Have Around the Home
Dave Barry Turns 40	Dave Barry is From Mars and Venus	Dave Barry's Guide to Marriage And/or Sex
Dave Barry is Not Making This Up	Dave Barry Slept Here: a Sort of History of the United States	TheTaming of the Screw: Several Million Homeowners' Problems
Dave Barry's Guide to Guys: A Fairly Short Book	Dave Barry's Homes and Other Black Holes	Stay Fit and Healthy Until You're Dead
Dave Barry's Bad Habits: a 100% Fact-Free Book	Dave Barry's Gift Guide to End All Gift Guides (out of print)

Dave has also written a couple of novels. The first is called Big Trouble. It's a murder mystery in Dave's own style, in what he calls "the Bunch of South Florida Wackos genre." Actually, only one person dies and that's not a murder. The motion picture, starring Tim Allen, was originally due to be released on September 21, 2001, but was postponed due to minor similarities between it and the tragic events of September 11. It opened instead on April 5, 2002, and seemed to close later the same day. Note: The movie is rated PG-13, which I would say also applies to the book.

His new novel is Tricky Business, about a group of South Florida wackos who go for a sail on a luxury gambling ship despite an approaching tropical storm. (This book has even stronger language than Big Trouble.)

During his year off, Dave will be promoting his new movie, Dave Barry's Complete Guide to Guys, based on the book of the same title. It stars Dave himself as the narrator and John Cleese as several obnoxious experts.

In the newsgroup, we write about a lot of the same things Dave does and a lot of other similar things, but we don't talk about Dave (unless we have a good reason). A few years ago, we were incited by group regulars Christin, a.k.a. Whislbabe, and Jeff, The Token Canadian, to start writing "The Banner Years," our own version of

Naked Came the Manatee: a Novel, of which Dave wrote the first chapter. I wrote chapter 3 of "The Banner Years," which you can read as I wrote it here. The entire story, as far as it goes, is now kept in the custody of John "Alt-130" Lavalamps. They, along with CICADFL and CMOT TMPV, all are fascinating people (even if CMOT is a Mac head) with cool sites, and now you have to visit them just to find out what those names mean. Other sources of amusement might include AutoDave: the automatic Dave Barry column generator, The Elizabethan Curse Generator, and The Home of Television Theme Lyrics.

A special note: On June 19, 1999, a long-time group member, dear friend to many of us, and all-around Good Person, Trish Simpson, passed away after a brief illness. Please visit her web site to see what her life was all about. Christin and John both have nicer tributes to her on their pages than I could ever hope to write, but I will donate my first check (minimum $25) from my Amazon.com sales from this page to the World Wildlife Fund in her memory.

To find out more about Dave Barry, read the FAQ. To find out more about the newsgroup and the weirdos in it, read the alternate FAQ. To get really confused, read the Squirrel FAQ. As a last resort, you might even try Dave's own web site, to find out where and when you might be able to see Dave or his all-author rock band, The Rock Bottom Remainders.

Hey! Guess what? I met Dave! On October 28, 1998, Dave came to a local bookstore here in Naperville to sign his new rag, er, book, Dave Barry Turns 50. I took along the school's brand new digital camera and took some pictures, which are presented with a nice little narrative about the evening. It includes the long-awaited picture of me. (This event repeated itself in 2000 and again in 2003; pages coming soon... okay, eventually. Maybe.)

And the fact that that's the most fun I have is pretty pathetic, I think.

I was given a Christmas present by a coworker, a present that will appeal to many Barryons. It's Duh! The Stupid History of the Human Race It's full of stories about incredibly stupid things people have done or said throughout history (many of which sound suspiciously like urban legends), commentary on the nature of intelligence and stupidity, and things you can do about stupidity.

Speaking of stupidity and urban legends, please help to eradicate the wildfire spread of them on the Internet. The choking doberman. The Nieman Marcus cookie recipe. The email tax. It's all horse hockey. Visit urbanlegends.com for more information.

Didja notice? I finally changed the gross background color of this page. Big improvement, isn't it? For the next improvement, I think I will divide the page into several smaller, faster-loading ones, probably as frames. This might be done by the end of the year (or it might not -- I said that about five years ago).

Oh, by the way, this page is designed to be best viewed
with any browser ; I originally wrote it testing it on Netscape 4.6 at 800x600, and the latest update was tested on Internet Explorer 6.0 at 800x600. It also looks acceptable in IE (because that's what they make me use at work) at 1024x768.

If you're interested in Japanese culture or language, or anime, too bad. I used to tell you to visit my friend Gary's site, but Geocities took it down in 1998 because he hadn't updated it since about November of 1996 (so why is Trish's site still there?). It's something totally different now.

A couple other friends of mine have recently put up pages. Mike is another member of Little "Q" and has put together a collection of train photos and links. Nick is a former member; his site is about trains and the Boy Scout Venturer post he co-advises.

Okay, so maybe after all this, you're wondering why I've sold out and put in all these links to sell books in association with Amazon.com. Well, for one thing, I think books are important. People don't read nearly enough of them (even me). And don't forget, I work in a school library (yeah, so I work with the AV equipment -- I still think books are important). If this were a real sell-out, I would have put in links to a lot of other stuff that I haven't read, such as Clancy's "Net Force" series, but I didn't because I can't recommend them. Also, I wouldn't have bothered linking to out-of-print books, since I don't get a commission from them. But the biggest reason is I need the money!!! I'm not kidding up at the top of the page when I say my job pays diddly. I didn't take all these digital pictures with my own digital camera, I borrowed one from work because I don't have one. The computer I wrote this page on is a 100Mhz Pentium (not a II, III, or IV, an original Pentium) that I got used from a friend. Hardly the state of the art any more, but it's enough for me because I can't afford any really processor-intensive software anyway. (It was a sacrifice to buy Agent and Train Dispatcher and Revenge of Arcade.) Having 2 weeks off for Christmas and 10 more in the summer is nice; not getting paid for those weeks is not so nice. So please, buy some books from my links. My empty bank account and I thank you. (The issuers of my maxed-out credit cards might not.)

I'm not completely mercenary, though. I make it a point every day, both at home and at work, to visit The Hunger Site to make a small but meaningful donation to hungry people around the world. If that doesn't interest you, there're also The Breast Cancer Site, The Child Health Site, The Rainforest Site, and The Animal Rescue Site. It doesn't cost you anything to visit these sites and make these donations.

I also support Seti@Home.

As you leave, please CLICK HERE.

P.S. These links are mostly to the paperback editions of the books. If you prefer hardcovers, then by all means, click here.)

This page was created on September 11, 1996. Last modified (for the first time in 16 months) on January 24, 2005. This site was moved to AT&T on September 28, 2002, after I couldn't remember my Geocities password and instead of simply telling it to me, they generated a new one and mailed it to my alternate email address, which was no longer active, and there's just no way to get ahold of a real person there to straighten it out.

I'll put in a counter eventually.

© 1996-2005 David Streeter (change nut to net in that address)
Notice: The above email address has not been and will not be transmitted by me via email or usenet, and its appearance on this web page and any associated web pages posted at this location does not constitute permission for any entity to submit it to, or harvest it for, any mailing list for any purpose, now or in the future, by any means, manual or automatic. Any unsolicited commercial email received by this address will result in the sender and the sender's ISP being harassed mercilessly; however, any failure on my part to do so in any given instance will not abrogate my right to do so in any other instance at any other time, including with the same offender, nor will it constitute a grant of permission to send UCE.
(The images "animcndb.gif", "welcome.gif", "liteline.gif", "anybrwsr.jpg", and "e-mail.gif" are presumed to be the respective copyrighted property of whoever I stole them from. If you own the copyright on one of them and would like me to remove it, please let me know at the above email address and I will do so ASAP. Book cover images and "90x29-b-logo.gif" used courtesy of Amazon.com. "nph-usnoclock.gif" © United States Naval Observatory; used with permission.)