About

In short, I’m a 41-year-old professional pilot happily living with my wife in sunny Orange County, California.

If I look familiar, it might be because I’m best known as a four-time World Poker Tour champion. My total career earnings on the Tour are well in excess of ten million dol… no, wait. That was a dream I had last night. Damn.

Oh yes, now I remember: the pilot thing. I’m currently flying the Gulfstream IV jet for Pegasus Elite Aviation and also an erstwhile flight instructor specializing in tailwheel, aerobatic, glass panel, experimental, and formation flight training. At times, it does bear an uncanny resemblance to life as a professional gambler… but I digress.

When I’m not flying, I’ve worked as a consultant, web developer, opera singer (no — seriously), and theatrical producer. And when I’m not doing that, I’m flying as a volunteer pilot for Angel Flight. Or scuba diving. Or … well, you get the idea. No two days are the same. I like it that way.

Speaking of flying, a bit about my qualifications and experience:

• Airline Transport Pilot certificate
• 6,500 hours total time
• Flight Instructor certificate with Single, Multi, and Instrument ratings
• Ground Instructor certificate with Advanced and Instrument ratings
• Seaplane and glider ratings
• Gulfstream IV type rating (PIC)
• Aerobatic competitor (Advanced category)
• National-level aerobatic judge
• Aircraft owner (Pitts S-2B)

Elsewhere

It may not look like it, but I do get out of the House every now and then. You can find me at the following social networking sites:

     

Rapp.org: Age-Defying Hypertext

The House of Rapp was one of the first substantial personal web sites on the World Wide Web. The first iteration went live in early 1995 when I opened an account with a small ISP (they were all small in those days) called Deltanet. I believe I was one of their very first customers. Sadly — or not so sadly, if you were to actually see it — the original HTML 1.0 code has long since been vanquished to that bit bucket in the sky. But somewhere I’ve got a canceled check from Deltanet that proves I had web space in early ’95.

Actually, the history goes back even further than that. I ran a BBS called Moving & Shaking (Fidonet node 1:103/940) when I was in college. That started during my freshman year at Concordia University in 1989, and it was connected to Usenet newsgroups at that time. In fact, here’s an archived sci.space.shuttle message I posted to the internet from Moving & Shaking in April of 1991. The Web didn’t even exist yet, but I was out there, making a mockery of something or other. Probably myself.

Anyway, in 1994 I started working for an early web design firm called Pacific Blue Micro as an outside consultant. They provided some free space on their web server, and I registered rapp.org. It was about that time that I began to receive e-mail (which I still get to this day) from people all over the country who implored in broken English for help with their budding rap music careers.

In the words of Dave Barry, I am not making this up.

One day, some Einstein emailed me to ask if I could book him at the House of Blues. I replied that I couldn’t even book him at the House of Rapp. I like a smarmy reply as much as the next guy, so the name stuck. It’s also a bit of a dig at people who learn my surname and immediately ask “Hey, do you ever do any rap music? Har, har!” as if they’re being original.

This is only the seventh design revision of Rapp.org since 1995. The revamps are few and far between because the House of Rapp’s purpose has remained consistent since day one. It has always been a place for me to primarily do two things: keep an online journal (or ‘blog’, as they’re called today) and post photos. It’s what I was doing in 1995, and it’s what I’m doing with it today.

So that’s the story. I hope you will enjoy visiting my electronic home. And for the love of Pete, if you’re an aspiring rap artist, please direct all requests for agents, bookings, and career advice to /dev/null.

Explaining the Artwork

Speaking of photos, you’ll notice the main photo gallery is password protected. Don’t take it personally. “It’s not you, it’s me”.

Actually, the real reason is because it contains thousands of photos going back to the early 1970s, and many of the people I’ve photographed over the years don’t like having their picture out there on the internet. However, I love photography, so I’ve made my Instagram gallery available in its place.

If you’re a close friend or family member who would like access to the photo gallery, drop me a line and I’ll hook you up.

Stay Updated

If you find my scribblings entertaining, you can enter your email address in the subscription field in the upper right corner of the page. When you sign up, you will receive an email notification whenever I publish a new post, typically a few times each month. No spamming, I promise. Your email address will never be traded, sold, or revealed to anyone.

If you’re the RSS type, you may also be interested in adding my blog feed.

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

The House of Rapp runs primarily on two popular open source software packages, WordPress and Zenphoto. They’ve been slightly modified to give them that rich, flavorful taste and smokey aroma you want in a web site.

The site is hosted on a shared Debian linux server at Dreamhost.com