Greg Altenberger

Nyaaa!, who’s da guy wit da hang-glider lapels up there? OK, I guess now that Alex has posted, we all need to turn in our assigned essays.

How I Spent My Last 30 Summer Vacations

By Greggers

What have I done since graduation?! Hold on, I didn’t study for this quiz, let me look it up. After graduation, I seriously considered entering the military, but joined the Air Force instead (!). I got to see Texas, some more of Texas, Scott AFB, and finally Germany! I pretty much fell in love with Europe, so when I got out of the Air Force, I got a job for a civilian company supporting the military, and by the summer of ’84 I was in Scotland! I stayed there 4 years (!), met some great people, but by 1988 I was ready for a change. My next stop was Vicenza Italy, which is about 30 miles from Venice. Northern Italy was great! Nice people, nice weather, and great food!! Oh, guess I didn’t mention what my job was. I worked on telecommunications terminal systems, but by the time I got to Italy, we were also working on PCs, and I finally started to sorta kinda enjoy my job, but I still had to work on those old terminals too, and be on call 24/7, which sucked! In 1991, the Reagan-years-military-overspending-boom started cutting back, so my company started laying off. I came back to the Granite City and started looking for a job again.

I got hired at A.G. Edwards in June of 1992, and have been there since, although we’ve gone through 2 mergers in the last 2 years, and we’re now Wells Fargo. I started out as a terminal/printer/PC technician again and spent quite a few years on the team specializing in installations and moves, which I enjoyed. Worked up to team lead and spent most of my time in that position, but when I tried my hand at leadership (YUK!), as assistant supervisor, I got out of that right away! Something about having to answer for why other people do things, just rubs me the wrong way (“I don’t know! Ask them!”), so I moved to a team that administered network accounts, Access Control, and stayed there for a couple of years, and really enjoyed the work, but what I enjoyed more was maintaining the documentation and making sure our procedures and processes were up to date. That led to my current job, supporting the Help Desk with documentation and helping maintain our knowledgebase, and occasionally help out with training.

I met Cyndie not long after starting at A.G. Edwards, and we got married in February 1996. No kids, she’s ten years older and already “been there done that”. Her son Jay and our grandkids are out in the Bay area, California, so we don’t get to see them as much as we’d like, but the internet helps! We started out living in Granite, but we bought property in Farmington MO, back in 1998, so when Cyndie took early retirement and we found ourselves down to one income, we decided to move to Farmington! I make the 80 mile commute every day, but I’m used to it (no, really! ..and, thank god for music CDs!) We have 23 acres out in the country, and I love it! It’s worth the commute to be able to live here.

In November of 2007, Cyndie went in for a routine colonoscopy, and they perforated her colon. We got her up to St John’s after a couple of days down here in Farmington, but complications from that led to her being up there in ICU for 5 months!! She went through rehab, and finally came home in July of 2008, and she’s still recovering and trying to get her weight back. (If you want to read more, her Caringbridge site has the whole story: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/cyndiealtenberger ) It’s been an emotional roller-coaster ride, but thankfully we’re past all that, and Cyndie’s glad to be home and getting a little more self-sufficient every day! I’m trying to convince her to go to the reunion with me, but she’s not sure she’ll be up to it. I’ll be there, though. I’ve been really enjoying reconnecting on Facebook with classmates from high school and especially from grade school (Frohardt)! Some folks I hadn’t heard about for … well, for 30 years! It’s great to read all of these posts, too! Looking forward to seeing everybody at the reunion!