Welcome to Rover4.com

This is my personal website for sharing photos, links, blogging, message boards, testing web stuff, and other misc. fun things. This website will always be under construction in one form or another so please check back now and then to see what's different.

So…what is “Rover4”?
Rover4 ended up as my handle for radio communications. The name originated at the first Mojave Desert Racing (MDR) race in January 1997. I took on the position of being a rover during the race. The job of a rover is to respond to incidents and handle them accordingly. Incidents can range from replacing course markers that were knocked down or ran over, responding to an injured racer and coordinating the ambulance route, up righting a rolled over race vehicle, or running replacement radio equipment out to a check point or road crossing. Paul claimed the name Rover1, Jesse claimed Rover2, and since I was the only rover with a four wheel drive truck, I claimed Rover4 and the name stuck since.

So…why the domain “Rover4.com”?
That started while attending the University of Phoenix. I was enrolled in the Information Technology (IT) program to obtain my Bachelor of Science degree. Group projects were quite common throughout the program and I exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses with my classmates. I was teased for having an AOL e-mail address. At the time, AOL was known for its dialup access while the cable and phone companies were pushing high-speed cable and DSL, and by this time, almost no one was using dialup. Plus, AOL was popular for its cutesy child-like interface and amongst its teen followers who were constantly IM’ing each other junk like, "OMG, cuz URH, SIT." So, to one up those guys, I registered my own domain name and created my own e-mail addresses and a website. After all, I was an IT major, I might as well start learning how to do stuff like that.