FAQ

Why is your domain name "geowayne"?

My domain name "geowayne" is a combination of my late husband's name and my own: George and Wayne. We were together nearly 45½ years, until he passed away on February 9, 2026.

George—that's him on the left in both photos—liked the Pet Shop Boys, too. He just wasn't nearly as fanatical about it as I am. His favorite music fell in the classical realm, with a special fondness for Johann Sebastian Bach. (Actually, I'm something of a Bach guy myself. In fact, I consider his Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major—especially the third movement—to be a serious contender as the greatest musical composition of all time.)

These photos are from back when I wore a full beard and George had only a moustache. Our facial-hair situation subsequently reversed: I now have just the moustache while George boasted a full beard in his later years.

The photo on the left (one of my favorites of us together) was taken in August 2007 by a friend of ours, professional photographer Mark Gebhardt. The photo on the right was taken at our wedding—once we were finally able to make it "legal"—by George's brother Richard. (And, yes, we both had a fondness for bowties, which, in a famous description by a fashion columnist for The New York Times, signal "an aggressive lack of concern for what other people think.")

"Geowayne" is also a subtle nod to one of my proudest professional achievements, in which a software program that I designed, World GeoGraph, won the Critic's Choice Award as Best Educational Program at the 1989 Software Publishers Association Awards (aka the "Codies," the software industry's Oscars).

That was one of two Codie award-winners that I designed during the 15 years I was with the late, much-lamented organization known as MECC—the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (later Corporation). The second was Oregon Trail II, cited as the Best Adventure/Role Playing Software of 1996. And that one was even a huge best-seller. No, I'm not rich. Companies reap the profits—not the employees. But I've got nothing to complain about: it was a great company, I loved the work, and the pay was decent. And I'm proud of having helped create a couple of the educational software industry's all-time finest programs, if I do say so myself (although I'm hardly alone in that opinion). What more can you ask for?

Had enough of this particular tangent? Yes, I thought so.

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