Although I tend to use the moniker dwarf online, my name is Dale Scheetz. I am a retired worker for The State of Florida, working for the Florida Department of State in the Division of Cultural Affairs. I hold a Masters Degree in Physics, worked for a year at Montana State on a PHD, and was told after passing the qualifying exam that it would be about five years to complete the PHD. I was borrowing money to stay in school at the time, and figured I could stand in an unemployment line with a masters degree about as well as I could with a PHD. So I returned to Tallahassee and went to work.

While most of what I learned studying Physics was how to program computers, and I worked freelance for many years, my carrier with the state required very little of my trained skill set. Yes, I did get to exercise my programming skills in Access and SQL, building tools I needed to do my job, most of the job was completely clerical, processing paperwork and generating my own all in the process of making grant payments to artists and arts organizations around the State of Florida. I worked with some really great people which helped make up for the low pay and high standards. Even after retiring I stay in touch with one of my supervisors and we have become good friends.

I am, however, much happier being retired. While this should give me more time to write articles for The Network Post, I seem to instead become more and more entangled with other projects. Hopefully this new Word Press format will help me integrate this project with all the other things I’m trying to accomplish these days.

The Network Post started out as an exercise in learning more HTML. Owning a URL is not expensive and my son is hosting the site so I began building the Post. Then my first round of cancer occupied my attentions, and even after the first round of Chemo my health continued to deteriorate until I could no longer work, and was forced to retire. Although I was planning to work another 5 years, and the amount of my retirement check has been greatly reduced, this was the best move I could possibly have made.

The doctors eventually found my gall bladder had failed and removed it. This was the major cause of most of my symptoms and life got a whole lot more livable. Shortly after that I had a lymph node swelling that turned out to be a more aggressive lymphoma, and we did another round of Chemo. While that last round burned my body down to almost nothing, with the help of testosterone shots and the yard reclamation project, I am slowly getting my stamina and strength back. While it has been a long road, I am more than happy to have traveled it.

I have written some about these experiences and hope to have many more things to write about in the future, so stay tuned!