Let me briefly introduce myself. My name is Rich Karstens (Luckily, I prefer ‘Rich’ as there are already plenty of Ricks in residence here.) I’ll be taking over the maintenance and improvement of SPADE and, in general, will be working with the software and products teams to extend the DMC’s web services offerings.

I’ve been a resident of Seattle for 16 years now, but am originally from points East: New York, Boston and Chicago to be specific. My background is in electrical engineering (signal processing) and music and I’ve been lucky enough to merge these two interests a few times in the arenas of arcade game sound and audio data compression. More recently, I’ve done time in the dotcom startup world, working mostly in the mobile handheld industry.

Outside of work, my interests center around the outdoors: skiing, biking, backpacking and climbing. During the last few years, as a relatively arbitrary goal (and as a good excuse to travel), My wife and I have been climbing to the high points of each state. With luck we should be finished in a few years. To not finish this goal anticlimactically, we plan to finish with Mt. Hood in Oregon rather than, say, Mt. Sunflower in Kansas.