Mike Uchima's Home Page
Howdy... my name's Mike, and you're visiting my home page. Like most Web pages, this one is perpetually a work in progress.
I can be reached at uchima@pobox.com, if you wish to contact me.
So far, there are two sections here, Business and Pleasure. Take your pick!
I develop computer software for a living. With over 20 years in the industry, I'm sure I can help you with your software project -- whether it is new development, or maintaining/enhancing an existing product. For more info, go here.
As if a wife and 3 kids (and working in the software industry) didn't keep me busy enough, here's some info related to my hobbies... :-)
Homebrew
One of my hobbies is brewing beer at home. Most home brewers place an emphasis on quality and variety (there are over 70 officially recognized styles of beer!), rather than quantity. There are even regional and national homebrew competitions, judged by officially certified beer judges. Brewing beer at home can be an exceptionally fun and rewarding hobby. If your interest has been piqued, visit my homebrew site, Mike's Brew Page.
Fusion (the music, not the nuclear reaction)
My other hobby is collecting obscure jazz/rock fusion CDs. I moderate a fusion music discussion forum over at eGroups. If you'd like to browse the archives of the FuseNet forum, they are located at http://www.egroups.com/list/fusenetdigest. Or e-mail me if you'd like to get signed up to receive the FuseNet digest via e-mail (it's free, of course).
Another related project is the Atavachron Archives. The Atavachron Digest was another on-line forum (now defunct), dedicated to the discussion of jazz/rock guitarist Allan Holdsworth, and related artists. I am in the process (in all my spare time, yeah right...) of collecting together all of the Atavachron back issues (going back to the early '90s), and making them available for download on the Web.
Personal Computers
My other other hobby is tinkering with PC hardware. I build my own computers -- including all of the computer systems I use in my software consulting business (see Business section, above). You may ask, "Why bother, when commercially produced PCs have become so inexpensive?" Well, the motivation is actually similar to the reason I brew my own beer -- I know exactly what goes into my PCs; I can tinker with the "recipe" to get things working exactly the way I want; I get the satisfaction of knowing that I put them together myself; I have uncompromising standards of quality; and I know that corners have not been cut to maximize some big faceless corporation's profits. Not to mention, if something does happen to malfunction, I can usually fix the problem myself, without spending hours on hold, or waiting for someone else to show up to do the repairs.
I don't have any real PC-related pages of my own up yet, so for now I've decided to compile a number of links to other sites which I have found to be exceptionally useful and/or informative. My computing links page is here.
(Posted April 6, 2000; last updated December 21, 2002)