March 13, 2003

I am a soccer player and coach, a Macintosh geek, a videographer, a musician, a card collector, a Steelers fan, a chess player, a genealogist, a web designer, an entrepreneur, an investor, an American, a husband, and a father. Although my family moved around a lot when I was young, landing for a spells in both Australia and Argentina, I did most of my growing up in Oregon. For first and second grade we were in Eugene. After a summer in Portland at my grandmother's house, we moved to Salem. There, I attended Liberty Elementary, Judson Middle School, and Sprague High School. I graduated from Sprague in 1987.
		Ty Davison

I spent the next four years at the University of Portland in Portland, Oregon, acquiring a Bachelor of Arts in Communications Studies. In terms of extracurriculars—and I don't mean dating coeds—I was in the Honors Program and active in the newspaper, year book, and radio station. The Gulf War of 1991 revealed a large fissure between my conception and experience of Catholic Christianity—ironically developed almost exclusively at UP—and the University administration's viewpoint of the same. I consider myself sadly estranged from my alma mater.

Nevertheless, if their was a bright spot to my college career, it was that my wife Erin and I met on October 20, 1990 on a retreat at the Oregon coast. We were married in Christ the Teacher Chapel on the University of Portland campus in Portland, Oregon in 1994. We'd been dating since December 1, 1990 and, good grief, if you don't know someone after 3-4 years, what's it gonna take? We've been married more than eight years now, and I continue to believe that meeting Erin was one of the greatest blessings of my life.

In late 1994 we took a job as apartment managers (a mixed experience at best) while Erin completed her Masters of Education at Portland State. I also worked as the Finance Manager (aka the Minister of Finance) for Benz Air Engineering Co., Inc., a small, family-owned company with a great bunch of people.

In August 1996 Erin and I moved from Portland, Oregon to Silicon Valley where Erin was a high school religion teacher at St. Francis High School in Mountain View, California. (She's also certified to teach English and French.) In June, 1999 we moved to Clackamas, Oregon. In August, 1999 we moved to Salem, Oregon where I grew up, and as fate would have it Erin took a teaching job at Sprague. We bought our first (and hopefully last) home in October, 1999. Our son, Jonah, was born on April 28, 2003.

I've played and coached soccer most of my life. I played Classic and Select soccer growing up and started all four years on the high school varsity. Back in the late '80s, my dad and I took a couple of teams to Costa Rica on a goodwill tour. In 1991, I coached Western Mennonite School to 8th place in state. In 1995, I was an assistant coach on the Gresham Union High School team that finished in the top 8. I was an assistant coach in the 1996-97 season at St. Francis High School where the team made league playoffs only to be bounced by the eventual champs 1-0 on a penalty kick. The 1997-98 year didn't end as well (thank you El Niño!), but the team still had moments of utterly dominate soccer. In 1998-99 we ended 16-5-2 and lost the WCAL Championship game 2-1 to #1-ranked Bellarmine in double overtime. Through what I'll politely call a "statistical quirk" we were not invited to the Central Coast Section (CCS) tournament even though we had more wins than all but two of the teams. Such is sports.

I grew up with computers, starting with a Commodore Vic-20. From there I graduated to a Commodore 64, a great game machine for its time. I didn't have a computer when I was in college, but I made plenty of use of the on-campus Mac lab where I found myself frequently frustrated by the underpowered nature of the Mac Plus machines. (Of course that still didn't drive me out of the Mac lab over to the always-vacant PC machines.) After college, I bought a Commodore Amiga 2000 and souped it up like Han Solo did the Millennium Falcon. Me and the Amiga parted ways after I ended up running—via an emulator—more Mac software on it than Amiga software. I bought a Mac IIci, Henry, a few months before I pitched the Amiga, and I've been a Mac guy ever since. I bought a Power Mac 7500/100, aka Zeke, in January 1998. In terms of the processor speed, this set up was about 10 times faster than the Mac IIci. I've now upgraded to a 275-MHz G3 accelerator card which I've overclocked to 320-MHz. This is roughly 100 times more processor power than Henry has, and I can't even fathom how much faster it is than the Vic-20 I started on. In May 2000 I bought a PowerBook which I named Trinity. With a PowerPC G3 running at 500-MHz, Trin benchmarks about twice what Zeke does.

As a consequence of all the computer experience, every position I've held (from human resources specialist to office manager to finance manager to database programmer to business manager) has had a strong technological component. In September 1999 I decided that life was sending me enough clues and I started a Macintosh computer consulting and web site design firm, SiteRev.com. The business has morphed a bit since the Internet bubble burst, and I do less web design and more business and computer consulting. That suits me just fine, though (obviously) I continue to enjoy fiddling with web sites.

I'm in the early stages of writing a screenplay about spirituality, sexuality and a woman trying to find her voice in a patriarchal society. Additionally, I've got a couple other screenplay ideas bumping around in my head. Ultimately, I'd like to have a audio/video studio where I could do lots of pre- and post-production audio/video work. Video production is, when all is said and done, what I'd really like to be doing in life.

Well, that and creating and recording music. I've written 3 or 4 albums worth of material on piano now. Still have most of the finished productions bouncing around in my head. In late 1997 I bought a Roland XP-80 workstation. I'm planning on putting out an album in late 2003. If you're even a remote friend of mine (or of my wife or my family or her family), expect to receive a sales flyer about this sometime in 2003. Various demos and b-side cuts can be found on the Music section of this web site in MP3 format if you're interested.

At some point in the late '90s my younger brother Bret turned me on to X-Files cards. The turkey. Now I'm hooked. Other than that, I'm mostly looking to complete sets I collected when I was growing up. The highlights of my collection are a 1949 Babe Ruth and the Wayne Gretzky rookie card. Babe is for sale, if anyone's interested.

Bret also turned me onto the X-Files TV show, which was really good stuff during its heyday. I particularly enjoyed the government conspiracy and alien abduction plot lines. Of course all that would be nothing without the terrific production values. Great escapist television. I'm also partial to Friends, but I've been an irregular viewer since fourth or fifth season. I also have managed to see most of The Simpsons episodes since reruns have been on twice a day for at least a couple years now. For a while I was into Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Felicity, Helcules, and Xena the Warrior Princess, but mindless TV has its limits, and I don't really see them very often any more. More recently, I've been tuning into The West Wing. The Amazing Race doesn't look half-bad from what I've seen, and I'm not usually keen on "reality" TV.

I have no idea what it is about Pittsburgh. Really. I've been a Steelers fan for at least 20 years now, and all that is without even once stepping foot in their hometown. (I know some of you saying, "Well, that's why you've stayed a Steelers fan.") On any given NFL Sunday you can probably find me watching the Steelers, and if I think their playoff prospects are particularly good in a given season, Steelers losses bum me out with a ferocity matched only by the extent that victories brighten my day. If you're a sports fan of any stripe, I'm sure you understand.

Yet another year passes, and I have not managed to get my Davison family history out the door. There's a lot to write about, I suppose. Among the other lines I'm researching: Raymond, Root, Mansfield, Thomson. I keep saying I'm going to publish a family history, but it always seems to get pushed to the background. I hope it's not because I want to do something more substantive before I publish it so that my own entry looks a little better, though certainly the thought's crossed my mind. And it's certainly not the genealogy software. Leicester Productions Reunion a great Mac program, and I highly recommend it.

Right now I'm researching Dr. Asa Lee Davison, the first president of the Utah medical association and my great grandfather. The basic genealogical outline of this project can be found on this web site's Genealogy section and at my DavisonFamily.us site.

I am an optimistic person. I'm optimistic about me, my family, my friends, and believe it or not, about you too. One of the great things about human beings is their capacity to change, to grow, to become more than who they are. Here's a few books I recommend: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, The Road Less Traveled and Further Along the Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck, and How to Talk So Kids Can Learn by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish.

The Truth is out there. Seek and ye shall find.

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