So glad to be here!

Hello, Steemit! 

My name is Charles, and I'm a computer programmer by trade. My wife and I have two great homeschooled kids, and we live part of the year in Oregon, part on our sailboat, and part traveling on land, mostly in South and Central America. I hope to expand on each bit of that last sentence in future posts!

I also edit a web page called Priced in Gold. And in spite of that site's focus on gold, I'm also a huge fan of crypto-currencies, and have been since the 1980s, when my work with building electronic locks based on public key cryptography led me to think about digital assets on a broader scale. Eventually, that led to attending the first Financial Cryptography conference in Anguilla, early adoption of Bitcoin, and now, to Steemit!

I grew up in a family of makers (although back in the day, it wasn't that special to be a maker... everyone built and repaired their own stuff much more than today). My dad built his own radios and stereos, developed his own film and made his own prints, my mom was a weaver as well as an excellent photographer. My brothers and I built robots, ham radio gear, model airplanes and rockets, even banjos and kayaks! 

This tradition continues in my family. My wife is a writer, jeweler and doll carver. She combines these into a weekly doll cartoon series called Ellen and Pink. My daughter writes and illustrates children's picture books, picks locks, takes apart everything she can get her hands on, sews her own clothes, uses 3D printers to make parts for her cousin's robotics league, and prefers Linux to Windows. My son excels at MMO character builds and constructing amazing MTG and Hearthstone decks. His Lego creations and Minecraft worlds are something to behold - and now he's learning to play the sax (his own idea, not mine!) Both kids are avid small boat sailors.

Wrapping many of these themes together is our participation in the Fort Galt project in Valdivia, Chile (see more at #fort-galt on Steemit). In fact, I first learned about Steemit from Gabriel Scheare, one of the Fort Galt founders.

I am enjoying the rich variety of material on Steemit now, and we're just getting started! I'm excited to be adding my own threads to the fabric and look forward to making new friends and helping to grow Steemit into a world-class online community. Maybe I'll even figure out how to include images in my posts!