About

Hello, my name is James L. Bantz, III.  I am a “thirty-something”, full-time graduate student pursuing an MSE  with electrical engineering concentration at The University of Texas-Pan American; I recently graduated Summa Cum Laude with a BSEE from the same university.  I also work full-time as a graduate research assistant for the UTPA Railroad Research Team, an industry-backed research initiative, led by Dr. Constantine M. Tarawneh, Ph.D.

UTPA Railroad Research Team Photo (2012)

I was born and raised in Hartford City, Indiana in the late 70′s to my father, James L. Bantz, II (a.k.a. JB2), and my mother, Kim Bantz.  I have one sibling, my younger sister, Kendra Storer, who in March of this last (2011) blessed me with my new niece, Kinley.  I also share my life with my three four-legged companions Dixie, Mason, and the red-headed stepchild, Scarlet.

This site and its content owes its existence to my parents putting that first computer in my hands some 25 years ago; my father, JB2, and my good friend Claire Willis for helping me discover and find the passion to seek and capture the fleeting moments and places in each of our short journeys through Life and commit them to the permanence of paper or the pervasiveness of the Internet so that others may share in that journey, now and maybe more importantly after its conclusion.

Wielding My Favorite Weapon In My Hand (JB3, 03/06/2011)

With that said, the intent, or should I hazard to even say the goal, of this small site is to shed a little light on myself and the things I most enjoy: engineering, photography, and computers.  If those things interest you as well, I invite you further to kick back and hopefully enjoy what you find within.  I gladly welcome your comments and opinions, however, be aware I do monitor and audit all who post on this site.  Should this in any way infringe on your fragile sensibilities or your misguided belief that you should be allowed to freely post within, then…, well… (you get the picture.)

Mason Lee’s Opinion of Generally Most Anything!

Sincerely,
JB3
09/12/2012

All text, photography, and other copy within is copyright its respective year by James L. Bantz, III, unless otherwise noted, and may not be printed, reproduced, and/or circulated in any manner or mode of media without the expressed written approval from said author.

This site is proudly cloud-hosted at Rackspace on Ubuntu LTS 10.04 using Apache webserver, PHP, and WordPress using the Linen Pro theme by Theme Foundry .  All photography within, unless otherwise noted, is the original work of myself, and was shot on a Nikon D7000 dSLR or most recently a Nikon D800 dSLR using an AF-S NIKKOR 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR lens for most shots.  Digital darkroom processing was performed using Adobe Lightroom 4 augmented with the powerful Nik Software image processing suite, and post-processed with Adobe Photoshop CS6 on simply the greatest hardware and OS on Earth: Apple MacBook Pro and iMac and Mac OS X Mountain Lion.