KimWatt.com

Welcome to my little corner of cyberspace. Having been a computer programmer most of my life, I thought it was time to have my own web site where I could share my life and work with my family and friends. This is a work-in-progress which I hope to complete one of these days.

Websites

Over the years I have designed and hosted quite a few web site. You can view my portfolio, or drop me a note if I could help you create an Internet presence for you or your company. Even if you don't have a company, you might be interested in a personal site sharing your life, or showing off your collections.

Genealogy

Way back when I developed a real interest in genealogy, I created an extensive searchable database with over 9,000 individuals, over 3,000 families, and 1,000 distinct surnames, all linked together. You can view the information at my alternate site breeze.org. A ton of the information was gathered by my mother's brother, Robert Looper, and my second cousin Laurie Scarpace. Unfortunately both of them have passed and I haven't continued developing the data. One of these days I'll get back into it, but for now the information is static.

Restaurants

During my middle years I had a real fondness for beer, and homebrewed regularly. I ended up investing in the Wisconsin Brewing Company and loved spending my free time as a volunteer there working the bottling line. I did their website, which was one of the first I had ever written back in the early 90s. The remnants of the site can be found here. After two consecutive 100 year floods, they went out of business, and I put word out that I was looking to invest in another brewery. We were contacted by an ambitious couple looking to build a brewpub in Delafield, and we eventually became partners, building - at the time - the largest brewpub in Wisconsin, the Delafield Brewhaus. We raised the money to build the project with both investors and bank loans. Our very wealthy investors decided that they wanted it for their own, and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. I was already working full-time as a software engineer at Rockwell Software, so I took the money and ran. That check actually let me retire at the early age of 48, and I moved to Three Lakes in the beautiful Wisconsin Northwoods, where I lived for 14 years. Now we are living in paradise in Cape Coral, Florida.

Real Estate

Once again back in my middle years I invested a lot of my earnings in buying single-family homes in the Milwaukee area. I ended up getting my broker's license so I could make the commission on the properties I bought - saving additional money. I've kept my license current to this day for some reason, even though I haven't had a customer in many years. I guess that is something I could always fall back on, but at the current time, the housing market is at its lowest in many years and the agents out there are nearly starving. Maybe one of these days the market will recover and I'll get back to work. When I was active I started my own company Breeze Realty, which was another one of the early sites that I wrote.

Computer Software

Most of my working years were spent as a computer programmer, or more formerly, a Software Engineer for both Square-D and then Rockwell. I never took a class on programming - I'm totally self taught by reading tons of books. Some people just have a knack for certain things, and software was mine. Now I'm working at Travelport, writing software for the travel business.