Personal Notes

Clicking on the photos will provide a full size image. Here are more family photos and more recent travel photos

Jonathan and Patrick are the joys of my life. Here are early photos of Jonathan feeding a bird at Seaworld in California, and Patrick in a tree at the site where his grandfather and greatgrandfather were born in California. Jonathan Michael and Patrick Arthur are both named for their grandfathers and great grandfathers.

Jonathan is now 6'5" and still growing. Pat is not far behind. They have become bright, funny, athletic young men. Here they are in 2002 in sports and play. Sometimes I think Pat actually enjoys being in some kind of headlock. He gets back at Jono in a variety of ways, not least of which is his interesting chatter. Jono(52) is an intimidating defender. He doesn't shoot much, but he is getting better and more confident by the day. Pat's feet don't seem to touch the ground very much when he is in a scoring position. This may have been his best year at soccer and the future is bright in his favorite activity.

It's funny, all the while the children are growing up, I was taking the pictures, so I have lots of pictures of them and few of us together. I must be getting old, because now people want to take pictures of us together. In 2006, we traveled to NYC to surprise their cousin who got engaged on the ice rink at Rockefeller Center(to the left). In 2007, they came with me to Bangkok -- to have custom suits made and to explore exotic Thailand while I taught(to the right).

My brother Jim found a photograph of my paternal grandparents which was of some interest since my father's mother died shortly after his birth and his father died when he was an adolescent. Here is my namesake, Michael Spring, with his wife, Catherine O'Brien Spring, circa 1900 -- with a little photo magic.

Through the 1990's Jim Williams and I made a number of trips to Thailand to teach intensive short courses at Mahidol University in Bangkok. We would arrive at 2:30 on Monday morning after a 36 hour flight and begin teaching at 8:00 that morning. We taught 8-10 hours/day for two weeks. Of course we had the weekend off to get ready for the second week, but that, as the evenings, was normally scheduled for us. Dr. Linda, sitting with the dark shirt next to me, scheduled our time and arranged for everything. She treated us like kings. The wonderful people and country are treasured memories. These two snapshots are from an early trip. My request to go on a tailboat ride was honored with an 8 hour trip up the river in 100 degree heat. It was great, but I learned to be very careful about what I asked for.

In 2001 I had the opportunity to teach a seminar on E-Business in Thailand for King Mongkut Institute of Technology. Professor Wichian Premchaiswadi was my host. He and is wife Nucharee, also a Professor at KMIT can be seen in the first row of the class picture. We had a wonderful seminar in Phuket followed by a little side trip to PhiPhi where we did some snorkeling and then back to Bangkok for another seminar. Here are a couple of snapshots of the class, the hotel in Phuket and the scenery at PhiPhi.

In 1995, I had the opportunity to travel to Australia to give a few talks. It was a quick trip -- four speeches in three cities in three days. Everything good that is said about the people of Australia and the country is true. It is a warm and hospitable place. While the three day visit did not leave much time for sightseeing, it was great good fun to sit eating dinner in the Grand Hotel in Adelaide, look out over the water, and realize that going straight ahead would bring you over the water to Antarctica and the South Pole! Here is a little picture of the last stop on the way to the South Pole

Two of the papers I delivered during the trip -- "Virtual Libraries" and "The Document Processing Revolution" are available on the "Selected Papers" panel. Karen Karykis, who graciously hosted the trip, was kind enough to indulge my ego by sending a picture from the keynote. It is posted as proof to my students that it is possible for me to smile!

In 1998, I was invited to offer a course in document processing at Molde College in Molde Norway. I have since returned a number of times to offer short courses and seminars. Kai Olsen arranged the seminars and trips. Kai has appointments at Molde, Bergen, and here at the University of Pittsburgh. Molde College has a beautiful main building that provides state of the art human and technical comforts. The space is built around a mall-like open corridor that rises through the four floors and is roofed in glass making the space bright and airy. It looks as shown on the left.

The scenery in Norway is incredible. Here are two views that I found typical of the incredible beauty. The first looks west at sunset across the atlantic. The other is a late afternoon look to the south from the hills overlooking Molde. This view looks across the fijord.

Someday when time permits, it is my intent to go through the dozens of internet funny pages I have saved and collect a set of the best and make a little site out of them. In the meantime, here are a few of my favorite bumper sticker lines -- collected from a variety of sources.

Students have created a variety of web pages on various standards and other internet topics. My contributions are twofold. First, a list of my favorite acronmyns for use in email. Second, a list of my favorite smiley faces for use in email.

My brother Justin has been involved with some rather neat stuff called performance poetry. More on it can be found here SOULSPEAK A little info on a poetry group called SOULSPEAK

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