Mom and Dad--the two who started this whole crazy bunch. People other than their children call them Barbara and Earl, except their granchildren who call them Grandma and Grandpa Stodden. They live at that beautiful place we simply call "The Farm." It is 120 acres of beautiful rolling hills, pasture, fields, and woods. There's a creek that we have all spent lots of time in, building bridges and dams; a big red barn with a massive hayloft--perfect for rope swings and hay forts; the woods where you can find morels mushrooms in the spring, black raspberries in the summer, and beautiful colored leaves in the fall; and a couple field roads up steep hills that double as great sledding hills in the winter. The 120-year-old house is showing it's wear and tear, but how boring it would be if the floors were all level, there were never any mice, and the plumbing in the bathroom didn't occasionally freeze up! The whole family went crazy and painted the exterior of the house two weeks before Steve and Steph's wedding. It's now light blue. Mom and Dad also have a 24 foot in diameter, 7 foot deep at the center, above-ground pool. Dad, Mike, Steve, and Earl built a deck around about ½ of it, complete with benches and enough room to get a running jump when doing a cannonball (or Mike's infamous "cowdive") into the pool. The deck sees lots of action in the summer, from midnight pool parties to supper served on the picnic table, and of course all those swimming grandkids!

Dad is a retired Senior Systems Field Engineer for UNISYS (formerly Sperry, Sperry-Univac, Univac, Paramax, etc. etc. etc.). In 35 years he worked up from the UNIVAC I and UNIVAC II to the latest and greatest computers. Since he worked many years UNISYS' defense department, he spent more time on Navy ships installing and upating their computers than he had spent on the ships when he was IN the Navy. With all his computer knowledge, he is the family tech support--on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Dad has a room upstairs that Mom calls the Frankenstein lab, where he keeps computer guts and combines new components and old 'puter parts to make refurbished computers. You know--a keyboard here, CPU there, throw in a few megs of RAM, maybe a sound board or other upgrade, and VOILA! A useable computer!

The UNIVAC I and II computers were quite the amazing feat in their day. The central processors for those computers were about the same size as a 10' by 10' room. It took two or three men working three shifts everyday just to keep them working. The Univac I had over 5,000 vacuum tubes in it and 7 mercury tanks for memory--an astounding thousand words. The Univac II had twice as much memory (WOW! 2,000 words!)using magnetic cores instead of mercury tanks. Dad spent a lot of time INSIDE those computers. The amazing thing is that the most pathetic of today's PCs are capable of far more than those computers were.

The refurbished computer business only occupies Dad's spare time, though, because he also works as a "team leader" for RGIS Inventory Specialists, helps Earl run the cropland, and has to try to keep up with all the stuff on the farm. It seems that something is always giving Mom and Dad trouble by breaking, leaking, or getting loose (as in cattle). As anyone who lives on a farm knows, there is always plenty to do!