March 11, 2012

Boshoo (Ojibwe language: Hello)!

Since this is my first entry, I'd like to start by thanking those that made this blog possible. I think that having a place to express my views is something that a lot of guys in prison need, so thank you for the people that made it happen for me.

I'm now 31 years old and looking forward to my 32nd birthday in a few days. Provided I make it, I'll be older than my dad who lived to age 31, having died of liver disease. It's really caused me to reflect on how short life really is and to make a fairly critical evaluation of my life.

I've been locked up almost continuously since I was 18-19 years old and am nowhere close to where I planned to be by this age. For those of you interested in finding out a bit more of why I'm in here (prison), you should check out my profile page and feel free to ask any questions you may have for clarification.

When I was originally arrested for my crime, I was 18 years old, getting ready to enter DeVry in Chicago, IL for a bachelor's degree program in Network System Administration, I think it was called. I was going to take their early/accelerated graduation option, allowing me to receive my degree in only 2 1/2 years. I was going to go into graduate school and eventually complete a doctoral degree in Computer Science, or so I thought.

However, with a felony hanging over my head, I was not allowed to leave Wisconsin to go to school and so everything got put on hold. I was never able to attend college on the streets, as my criminal sentence was 25 years in the state prison system. Looking back and calculating the time, I should have had my PhD sometime around 2004-2005 and been working in an appropriate field for the last 7 years. I probably would've had my own business in programming or an ISP of some kind.

I'm currently eligible for parole but probably will not receive a grant of parole until 2015, and will then have approximately 10 years of supervision on the street to complete to round out my sentence of 25 years. So when I'm about 45 years old, I'll be free. I'm trying not to have any illusions about my longevity with my dad having died so young. I figure that I'll be lucky with about 15 years of true freedom (no parole supervision), provided that I don't mess up and get my parole revoked for any length of time—which from what I see of the guys coming back to prison after getting out on supervision, is pretty good possibility. I guess that it just made me think of what my life could have been if I hadn't fucked it up so bad.

Anyway, before I got out, I have to go through Sex Offender Treatment. The program I have to do is the most intensive the Wisconsin Department of Corrections offers at 18 months; formerly, it was a 3 year program. If you keep reading my posts, rest assured that I'll probably be talking about my progress in that program. Right now, I think I'm slated to begin that program next January or so, but I'm hoping to be in the one starting around June of this year. Basically, my release depends upon my successful completion of that program, and from what I see, most open homosexuals do not complete it. So wish me luck!

Anyway, my profile page is a little off since I had it done for me a little while back, and I now have a job working at the Institution Maintenance Department, pretty much as a clerk. I do payroll, purchase orders, and work with the tool inventory for the institution. They have this rule here that you can only work at the same job for 2 years at a time, then have to take 2 years off, and I was coming up on my 2 years as the Database Administrator. It's still a 5-rate (highest pay grade for institution workers at $0.42/hour), so my pay didn't get affected by the change. I'm just not doing all the programming work like I used to, although I am redesigning the databases used at Maintenance and get called in for "consulting" in other areas that have databases because they haven't been able/willing to replace me apparently. I like to think of myself as irreplaceable, but I'm sure that they have their own reasons. Heheh!

Before I close, I'd like to repeat myself a bit from my profile page. I am especially interested in meeting people from the Oshkosh, WI area so I can get visits. At a minimum, I can offer a free dinner to anyone that wants to visit me. They run a kitchen that serves inmates and their visitors when they visit that I'm told is quite good. It's restaurant style/quality dining as it's part of an apprenticeship program they run for people that are working on their vocational diploma in Culinary Arts here. As I said, I'll buy as they only take money from inmate accounts as payment, so, if you or a friend is in the area and is looking for a free (presumably decent) meal, let me know in a personal letter. Address is on my profile page. We'll set something up.

Thanks again to everyone at Between the Bars that made this blog possible and thank you for reading! I look forward to any inquiries or responses and will probably post again in a couple of weeks (less if I get a few responses). I plan to post once a week when things finally pick up with traffic, especially when it comes time for treatment.

Sincerely,
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