Mark W. Shead

What's here...

Stuff Happens contains stories, pranks from college and various odd and interesting experiences. For example, check out the business in Nowata Oklahoma where you could pay to sit in glowing toxic waste? Read about an elaborate college prank facilitated by Sprint.

The Music section has a little about my music, some advice for people studying music and a paper or two from college. Of particular interest is the statistical analysis of a Beethoven Symphony where I attempted to analyze a piece of music using numerical methods instead of traditional music theory.

The Book List is the newest section. It was created as part of an XML class at Harvard Summer School. It lists the books along with a brief review. everything is arranged into categories to make things easy to find. each book links to Amazon.com so you can buy anything that looks interesting. If you buy a book off this site I'm supposed to get a credit at Amazon so I can buy more books .....we'll see how that works out. I also have an experimental directory called Info2 where I am trying out some other uses of the Amazon API in pulling down larger amounts of information from Amazon.

Short Bio....

mark3.jpg (17046 bytes)When I was 10 I began piano lessons in Fort Scott.   My mom wanted me to take for at least 2 years and by that time I was hooked.   I played the piano and keyboard at church through high school and made the tracks for the Sunshine Snowflake Middle School Choir for 2 years.

I graduated from Fort Scott's Faith Christian Academy in 1994.  I was top and bottom of a class of 1. :)    I graduated from ORU in 1998 and finished my masters degree in music comp in 1999 at Pittsburg State University.

While at Pittsburg I took a job as Network Administrator at Mercy Health System of Kansas.  I also spent some time on the the weekends as praise and worship leader for Living Word Family Church in Nowata Oklahoma.

During the summer of 2000 I went to Michigan on vacation and was offered a job at Resurrection Life Church in Grandville. I turned it down, but a very persistent individual from the church started calling me every day encouraging me to come to Michigan to take the job. I started at Reslife in the beginning of 2001 as Director of Information Technology.

In the spring of 2001 I asked the most beautiful woman in the world to marry me. She said yes and we were married on July 7th, 2001.

While in Michigan I started taking software engineering classes toward another Master's Degree through Harvard's Extension School. We decided we'd like to spend some time in Mexico, so I quit at Resurrection Life and took a short term job at a local software shop. We did move to Mexico for a few months in 2006, but decided to come back to have our baby in the US.

I'm currently residing in Kansas and doing consulting work. I help businesses align their human and technology resources toward business goals. So business management consulting by someone who is at home with technology systems.