Josh's Pit of
Despair
Please welcome Preston Joshua Gerst to the world. Born December 30, 2003 in Richardson,TX. Click his picture to see more pics.
Last edited 12/13/01.
Howdy from Texas, y'all.
I'm originally from Iowa, and I took a job with
Ericsson Communications
in Richardson, Texas. I was a wireless systems engineer for Ericsson in the Wireless Communications Division. Most of my project work involved initial RF parameter tuning and optimization of new PCS networks using D-AMPS 1900 MHz technology. D-AMPS is the IS-136 digital specification for the TDMA American Mobile Phone Standard. It offers a wide range of services for cellular phone customers. My department in Ericsson provided switches, base station equipment, mobile phones, and engineering expertise to cellular providers.
A few years ago I took a job with
Metawave Communications
, which is based in Redmond, Washington. I work in the Dallas Field Office as an RF Engineering Supervisor over the East Coast region. We manufacture, install, and optimize smart antenna systems called Spotlight. These are cellular antenna systems with twelve 30 degree phased array beams for a full 360 degrees of coverage at each cell site. This allows for greater interference rejection, and with our higher gain antennas, greater coverage and call quality. Some of the primary uses of our product are spectrum clearing for digital CDMA implementation for AMPS systems, cell sculpting (per beam power control and sector orientation) for load balancing to increase capacity in CDMA systems and better CDMA optimization including reducing pilot pollution, and increased capacity of AMPS systems from closer frequency reuse or omni-/near omni- trunking increases over sectorization using Spotlight. We also have a six sector product which can increase a sites capacity by 50-75% which is very difficult to achieve with standard antennas.
I was married on August 1st of 1998 to a beautiful woman named Kristin. We met at
Iowa State University
where I graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering. She grew up in Chicago, Illinois but was born in Paris, France and lived there for a few years while her father was working there. Kristin is teaching French at
Namaan Forest High School
. She has four sections of French I and two sections of AP French. Here is her
class webpage
, which she designs and maintains herself. She is also working on her Master's in Secondary Education of French at the
University of North Texas
. Here is a picture of her.
When I was working for Ericsson, I travelled a lot, so for Valentine's Day in 1997, I got Kristin a Shih Tzu named Bert. They kept each other company.
Kristin and I bought a house in Garland, Texas in January of 1998. Garland is a suburb on the Northeast side of Dallas.
I love skiing and partying at
Breckenridge
in Colorado. We also enjoy
Vail
,
Keystone
, and Copper Mountain. I usually ski for at least one week every year. There is nothing like flying down a mountain with the wind whipping your hair and some light powder spraying from your skis.
Click here for some pictures of our family Spring Break ski trip for 2001 at Copper Mountain.
In June of 2000 Kristin and I became the Godparents of Kolby Ray Huxley. His parents are Mike and Sarah Huxley of Oakville, IA where I grew up. Mike and I were each other's Best Man in our weddings. Here's a picture of my godson.
On December 14, 2001 my life changed forever. I had LASIK surgery performed and am seeing better than I have since third grade when I got glasses. It is truly a miracle of modern science that we can reshape the eye with a laser to correct vision. It was scary having it done but the procedure was painless, if a little uncomfortable. My eyes were a little sore for about 6 hours afterwards when the local anasthetic wore off, but I took a nap and when I woke up I could see again (through the plastic goggles taped to my head). My thanks to Dr. Newman for his skill, although my money should be thanks enough I think. :)
We took a trip in the summer of 2001 to London and France for two weeks and took some nice
pictures
. There are a lot of pictures on this page, so it may take a while to load them all on slower connections. I highly recommend getting a broadband DSL or Cable connection. :)