About

October 14, 2024

Hi there!  My name is Mark.  I'd like to welcome you to my website and extend a big 'thanks' for dropping by!  If you look around a bit, you will see that most of the web pages are complete but if I am still working on one, it's denoted with an asterisk.  You'll also see a date near the top of every page, which is the date that page was last updated. 

While most of the 'Nothing Else Matters' website consists of things that interest me and I wanted to write about, there are a couple of pages dedicated to two apps that I have created in Microsoft Excel.  Both are free to download and use and I sincerely hope that they will be a benefit to anyone who chooses to use them.

The 'Canadian Retirement Income Planner' is meant to help Canadians make some important decisions about their retirement and 'RV Towing Calculators' is designed to help anyone who tows a fifth wheel or travel trailer (coming soon) to do so confidently, knowing that they are not exceeding the manufacturers' specifications for maximum weights.

The love of my life, my soulmate and the amazing mother of our children is my wife Judy, a beautiful woman with a great smile who has stuck with me through over half a century of marriage (since 1973) which does not include the three years or so that we dated.  We have four talented adult children, three beautiful daughters-in-law and eleven super-smart and remarkable grandchildren!  You are welcome to peruse my For The Love Of Family web page if you want to see more of this incredible family of twenty!

Click on any photo for a description.

Early in my adult life, I held a variety of jobs including short stints at the post office, parcel delivery, building concrete curbs and sidewalks, a couple of lumber mills, building aluminum boats, and repairing pinball/video games.  During this time, I watched with great interest as a worldwide, growing phenomenon blossomed into the high-tech computer industry and at some point, decided that I was very interested in pursuing a career in that field.  I eventually enrolled in several courses at BCIT, studying math and electronics at night school while I worked during the day to support my family.  One day, a couple of years later, while I was watching our two older sons playing in an under-11 hockey game, one of the other dads mentioned that the company he worked for, CP Air, was looking for someone to fill a position in their network control centre out near the airport.  I remember telling him how awesome that sounded and that I was very interested!

He arranged a one-on-one interview with the Network Control manager, after which I was hired to start almost immediately as a data network controller in-training.  I won't bore you with the details, but this was the start of what would become a 25-year career in the computer and networking business, most of it at IBM as an Account Executive and then later on at AT&T after they bought the IBM Global Network in 2002.  A couple of years later and after careful consideration I chose to retire in early 2004.  The change in corporate culture from what I was used to at IBM and the fact that I had the resources to do so made this decision easy.  

But, I was only fifty-one years old, so after a few months and lots of reflection, I decided that I wanted to find a job doing something that would be fun.  A video I had seen years before by comedian Bob Newhart called Bus Driver School, inspired me to apply for a job with Coast Mountain Bus Company in Vancouver, BC, who at the time were hiring transit operators.  During my interview for this position, I told the panel of three that I didn't really want to be an operator but that what I really wanted was to be an instructor. 

I think they appreciated this ambitious response and offered me the transit operator job, starting almost immediately in training.  Two years later, when an opening came up in the Training Department, I applied for and was successful in getting the  job I really wanted, being an instructor.  The instructor job turned out to be the most satisfying work of my career!  I think what I enjoyed the most was literally taking someone who had never driven anything larger than a compact car and molding them into a successful transit operator, able to safely navigate the downtown streets of Vancouver in a 60' articulating trolley bus!  I spent ten years there before finally retiring for good in 2017.

North Vancouver, British Columbia was our home for 41 years, from 1980 until the summer of 2021 when we moved to the town of Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island.  For many years, now our interests have included travel, skiing and golf but since we both retired, we've added RV'ing, kayaking and best of all, pickleball to the list!  We also enjoy hiking, primarily in the rainforests of British Columbia or the deserts of the American Southwest, cruise ships, warm beaches, cycling, boating, hanging out with good friends, happy hours and to be frank, just enjoying life outdoors.

Click photo for more info.

I welcome any comments as long as they are respectful.  I can handle criticism and opposing viewpoints, in fact I encourage them.  Join the discussion on any of my web pages.  Polite, courteous, or neutral comments will be published for everyone else to see.  Comments that are deemed rude, inappropriate, vulgar, hurtful, racist, misogynistic, violent, or sexual (among others) will not be published.  Remember, we can all agree to disagree and still be respectful!

The 'Nothing Else Matters' website, and the 'Nothing Else Matters' logo are copyright 2023 Mark Shaughnessy.