Hank's First Blog

Good Day All Who Enter Here:


Hello, my blog name here is Hank the Tank which is a take on my old military nickname "Hank". How I got that nickname with my real first name being Brad is its own story but I won't bore you with that here. One of my favorite self-descriptions is the following:
Florida-Based Cleveland Browns Fan Extraordinaire, male model, former Palm Springs gigolo, married to a Victoria's Secret swimsuit model and Your King.
Of course some of that is pure bull (definitely not the part about my wife).

Actually as a born-again Christian, My King is Jesus Christ. But now on with the blog.


I live in sunny Florida with my lovely wife Kyrsten and the rest of our family who also lives in Florida. My mother, Lois lives up in Jacksonville as do some dear family friends named Leitha, her daughter Kirsten (not the same as my Kyrsten, different spelling) and her teen granddaughter Aslin. Aslin is now 15 and a teenager with a attitude as I can attest to first hand.

My wife's mother, Marti lives about 1 mile from us and runs her own interior design business. Nice to have family close by. She also has a nifty network of friends who we all consider family as well.
And then's our network of wonderful friends who are family to us. Including:
Tanya (Dr. Ziadi)
Terri (Tanya's significant other)
Amy, her husband Matt and son Clint
Ed & Hughanne, daughters Tina, Holly, ???ok I'm having a mind block here on the third.

I'll list the others as my brain recalls them.


My wife and I do have our own MySpace page as well (myspace name: hanktank88) which we set up at the behest of Aslin who has her own (naturally). We're one of three adults whom Aslin actually allows on her MySpace Friends list (the other two being her mom, Kirsten and her life partner Cynthia). I've known Aslin since she was 6 so I must have done something right being a big brother to her. But that's another story.

My first love is photography and digital imaging in which I'm in the process of setting up my own little mini-biz as a photographer and digital imaging. I specialize in photographic restoration (using the latest version of Photoshop) and film scanning. I just bought a Nikon CoolScan film scanner and now learning the finer points of scanning old film and slides so I can offer that service to people who have lots of old negatives they'd like to digitize for future preservation.

My wife's first love is horses, we have two thoroughbreds. She can tell you more about those, believe me I hear about them every day. Lord I love her.


I graduated from Kent State University in 1988 (hence the 88 in my hanktank88 handle) with a degree in Computer Science. I spent four years in the Air Force as a mainframe COBOL programmer which I would later parlay into a contract job at NASA, again as a mainframe programmer. At NASA, I maintained and developed software for Space Shuttle support systems, most of which by now are no longer maintained being that the Shuttle (which I now refer to as a obsolete Space Dipsty Dumpster. The only thing it does well nowadays is suck up government revenues from other more worthy space programs and enrich contract-firm CEOs)
Nowadays, I drive a van around the country to all the states where NASA has bases being that all the systems I worked on as a computer programmer are no longer maintained, except for minimal maintenance. The Space Dipsty Dumpster is being retired in 2010 (should've been retired in the 1990s) but only after the Columbia disaster.
I have a lot more to say about my days at NASA (actually a lot of good times) but I'll save those for a future blog.

I do keep my mainframe systems resume out on the big career search sites for COBOL or ADABAS/Natural jobs as a lot of firms are not going ahead with replacing their mainframes since they still do the jobs they were designed to do very well. In fact as of 2005, old COBOL programs were still processing more transactions than all the newer object-oriented (and distributed) systems combined.

Politically, I consider myself a Reagan Republican but with some Libertarian beliefs and even some occasional Liberal thought thrown in. Which makes me more of a independent thinker. Note I say Reagan Republican because the Republican Party of today has strayed afar from what was their base beliefs (smaller government (laugh), lower taxes, border protection (another big laugh), and personal freedom. All of which are not represented by today's Republican Party. And don't get me started on the Democrats.
You'll read more in future blogs.

I'm a avid Fan of the Cleveland Browns and call myself the Offical Dawg Pound Ambassador on the Scout.com sports web sites. Even if they haven't won a championship since 1964, they're long overdue.

Finally, I do wish to thank a Liberal blogger, Russell Glasser (and his lovely wife Ginny) for inspiring me to start this blog. I don't agree with much of Russell's political beliefs but admire him for his independent thought and his rather irreverent way of expressing his beliefs.
We have one thing in common, a definite dislike for Amway and what that company truly represents. I was in Amway for a few years (yeah, I admit it) but left it behind thanks largely to Russell's web site on Amway. I make it a habit to read Russell's blog, it is quite educational.
Thanks Russell.

And I guess I'm rather irreverent myself as I have a definite dislike for phony baloney fat cats both in corporate America and in government. I voted for George W. Bush twice and now realize how much I should have held my nose in the voting booth both times. Particularily with his stances on Immigration and U.S. Border protection. Pres. Bush has proven he takes his cues from his CEO buddies in the Cheap Labor lobby and not from the Constitution.



Well that is all for this, my first Blog here. Hope you all enjoy this and stop by in the future.