Time for an update of the main page – this one was getting old and decrepit, and while it might be an accurate reflection of my present state it is a bit boring.

 Since I’ve been looking for some of my friends from high school and college, I might as well put some autobiographical information here to help out any of my friends who are trying to Google me. I’ll probably change this pretty soon when I find a format that suits me.

 I was born Michael Rouse 41 years ago in Southern California and went to school at Highland Elementary in Norco, California from Kindergarten to the third grade. I lived at 3999 Sierra in Norco, and while thirty years makes my memory hazy at best I do remember being friends with Brenda Sue Gallotti (which I probably misspelled) and Eddie Roney, who may have moved to Mississippi. I have no idea how they are doing but on the off chance they see this while doing a search of their own name I’m including it here.

 After that my family moved to Southern Oregon, between Jacksonville and Ruch, and I went to Ruch School through the sixth grade, then on to McLoughlin Junior High, then Medford Mid High, and finally Medford Senior High. I ran around with a tough crowd we called, appropriately enough, “the gang,” playing tough street games like bridge, pinochle, and Uno. Ok, so we weren’t that tough, but it was a lot of fun anyway.

 I won’t go into all the history, but the group included Molly Lee, Michael Calkins, Douglas Anderson, Anthony Allison, Debbie Counts, and Michael Knotz (whose last name I may have misspelled). These were of course the coolest kids in school, at least by my reckoning – those that disagree can start their own website.

 Of course I had other friends and people I thought were fun and interesting to be around – a lot of the people in Band, for example (where I played tenor sax) and in advanced English and Math classes. There are the girls I thought were attractive in one way or another – Anna Schatz (who lived just outside of Jacksonville and was an all-around nice person) and Elizabeth Bogley (who had pretty red hair but I doubt knew I existed) and Teri Schmeusser (who I had my first crush on in German class). Yep, nothing says “I’m almost 40" like embarrassing classmates you haven’t seen in decades.

 After attending Medford Senior High School (before they broke it up into North and South Medford) I went off to Texas to the University of Dallas. I’m not sure if she was the first friend I made there, but Anastasia Zaruba was my physics lab partner and a fun person to talk to. The physics class as a whole was pretty cool. There was Alan Harzewski and his wife Bonnie (if I accidentally misspelled your name, Al, I’m sorry). In Rome I met two of my closest friends and quite possibly the nicest people I’ve ever met, Meg Davis and Maureen Tweedy. It wasn’t just because they were smart, attractive, and funny either – that was just a fringe benefit. When Meg died in a plane crash on Thanksgiving Day 1988 it really tore me up inside, and I have to thank Maureen for helping me through it. “Through it” being a relative term, because I doubt a day goes by that I don’t think of her. Sarah and Sherman Orr were also fun to be around, as was Karen Norris (the only person from Belize I’ve ever known).

 Well, after I graduated with a B.S. in physics, I went to the University of Texas in Austin where I spent a year in Aerospace Engineering. Toward the end of the year I entered a writing contest sponsored by Honeywell where we predicted what the future would be like in 25 years. My prediction involved the widespread use of diamond-based computer chips, and my guess is my prediction will be pretty accurate considering 2013 is nine years away and diamond still looks attractive as a semiconductor substrate. I won a $3000 prize and was flown to Minneapolis, which was a lot more fun than it sounds.

 The other sad point in my life was losing my brother Rick on May 2^nd 2000 to undiagnosed diabetes. He was only 26 years old. We had a lot of fun together – we’d team up and crush the computer in Alpha Centauri, liked the same kind of books and computer games, and generally got along well together. I miss him a lot.

 That should be a sufficient beginning to catch most search engines. I may flesh this out a bit, but it seems to have gotten depressing so I’ll stop now.