Todd's Home Page

Hi! My name is Todd, and welcome to my pages! They're not cool, or edgy, like those of some of my friends. In fact, they're pretty damn dated now. Basic HTML stuff I learned 9 years ago and never put to any practical (i.e., money-making) use (*sigh*). Ah well.

My hometown is Northville, Michigan, and I am a Northville High School graduate, back when it was still on the Hill. I had fun at our 10-Year Reunion. My Parents still live in Northville, although they sold their place recently and will be moving out of their Northville apartment soon for... someplace not in Northville I would guess. My sister Becky is now married with (soon to be) two children and living in Fowlerville, MI. Pictures are on Mailin's page.

So what's my story, you ask? Born and raised in Michigan, I studied communication at MSU because I didn't know what I really wanted to do with my life (unlike now, *ha ha*). But I was always a bit of a techie. When grad school came around, I got the MSU Computer Lab to pay for even more communication classes.

My assistantship turned into a part-time temp job, then into a full-time temp job, and finally into a full-time regular job in the Computer Center, doing a variety of things, including managing the Multimedia Graphics Design Lab as well as the university's Librairies, Computing & Technology Training Program back in its formative years.

Meanwhile, I met a wonderful woman, and got married in 1996! The picture on our home page is from our honeymoon.

In May of 1997, my wife and I moved to Boston, and I joined Advis, an Internet-oriented systems integration firm, as a trainer and staff consultant. On December 31, 1998, Advis was bought by Watertown-based Primix. I worked as part of their marketing team, managing the company's public relations until I left to join Miller/Shandwick Technologies in June 2000. (Primix, by the way, was subsequently bought by Canada-based Burntsand.)

In September of 2001, M/ST merged with The Weber Group to form Weber Shandwick Worldwide. Remarkably, I survived quite a few rounds of layoffs as the economy continued to turn south. I had kept in touch with Miller/Shandwick's former president Tony Sapienza through this, who, with Paula Slotkin, had started up a tech PR firm in the dark ages of early 2002 called Topaz Partners. By early 2003, the writing was on the wall as many of my clients continued to struggle to pay big agency fees. So I jumped at the chance to work for Tony again.

I like my work a lot more than this guy. Who knows what fortune has in store for me, though...

I recently decided to bone up on my HTML a bit. Although I'm not sure I'll ever have the time or motivation to revisit these pages and do another facelift, I did recently become more active in the Boston Club of the MSU Alumni Association and redesigned our web page. Let me know what you think! I finally finished my master's degree in December of 1997, and am still looking for more classes to take. I'm doomed...

Contact Information

For more information on how to get in touch with me, finger vanhoose@lalaland.cl.msu.edu or simply check my hypertext finger link, or maybe ask a friend, if they're willing to say. If you want any more info, check out my resume pages or just get to know me!

My academic interests page explains one part of my life. My computer-related interests page explains another. In general I like astronomy, swimming, hiking, camping, computers, (human) languages, biking, philosophy, reading, comparitive religions and cool quotations.

Recommendations and Endorsements

I used to promote AIM, but I've been converted to Trillian! This chat client supports AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC and ICQ. It's great!

First, this web site was on one of MSU's original web server (clunix). I used telnet to get there. Then, I moved it to my own FreeBSD machine. Then, I moved, and had to use telnet to get here again. Then, SSH came around and I used a number of SSH clients. Then, firewalls started getting in the way, and my SSH clients met their match. I was almost cut off from my web site until I found Absolute Telnet. It's a great client, and was chosen after evaluating many alternatives!

Interested in what you're listening to (if indeed you are hearing some form of music at this point)? It's a MIDI file of "Lemon Tree" by Fool's Garden.