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I am a carbon-based life form on the planet Earth, which orbits a star called "the sun," which itself is in a galaxy known as the "Milky Way." I'm the uncle of 2 sweet little girls, Bella and Cecilia.
I have a truncated Polish surname but am mostly Irish (100% Irish on my maternal side, mostly Irish with a bit of Polish, Scottish, and English blood on my paternal side). As my grandfather often says, "Ireland is a Viking country," which leads me to the question, "what does it mean to be '100% Irish' or 100% anything? is there such a thing?"
I have been known as Stephan, Steve, T, Sterve, Steerve, Steve el Loko de los Satelites, el Esteve, Steve El de los Mil Paranoias, Steve el Gringo, Steve el Yanqui, Steve the drummer from Elysian Fields, Steve de Chicago, Schtebble, el Güero Chingón, Stif, Estif, Maderfaker, Spaceman-Steve, Mythic-P, Bison7, "808", Hansrud1, and Frampton.
I have spent the better part of my life in Minneapolis, Minnesota (19 years), and St. Louis, Missouri (8 years); I currently reside on the south side of Chicago, Illinois. I have also lived for brief periods in Nuremburg, West Germany (1991), San Juan, Puerto Rico (1995-1996), Madrid, Spain (1998), and Buenos Aires, Argentina (2001). Other Countries I've been to include Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, France, Switzerland, Canada, the Netherlands, and Austria.

Out of high school we had a little band that went on until I moved to the Caribbean. We played rock and roll and had a fairly decent following after about 5 years, cut a CD in 1994, et cetera. I miss playing those gigs, but I have continued to play music whenever I've been able. I play drums and percussion, and a bit of guitar, and can sing okay.

For about the past 10 years I have practiced the hobby of visual satellite observation, which has led me to a passionate interest in astronomy, cosmology, and physics, as well as human spaceflight. I've always held a great passion for aviation and aviation history. Beginning in the fall of 2003, I began to maintain a journal having to do with these topics. Some highlights of that journal include meeting Burt Rutan and Eric Lindbergh at the X-Prize award ceremony, the Venus Transit of 2004, the Cassini Saturn Orbital Insertion and continuing mission; the landing of the Huygens probe on Titan, the landing and continuing missions of the Mars Exploration Rovers, the shuttle return to flight in 2005, the Deep Impact mission success, the return to Earth of the samples collected during the Stardust and Genesis missions, observing the Large and Small Magellenic Clouds (LMC and SMC) from Brazil in February 2008, and also many sessions making observations, mostly naked-eye, but also from such observatories as the UMSL observatory in St. Louis, MO, and the Dearborn Observatory in Evanston, IL.
a globular cluster, one of my favorite types of objects to observe (the photo doesn't do it justice!)
Above: the International Space Station in an image taken from from Space Shuttle Discovery after undocking on June 11th, 2008. Click on the image to enlarge.
Click the image above to go to NASA's J-track 3D java applet for hours of fun, click "yes" when prompted by the security warning thingy.