Frank Whiteley - CUGG President    

By Jim Conant

With Internet Service Providers crashing and burning all around us, CUGG member Frank Whiteley's GreeleyNet is one ISP that is growing faster than ever. If you wonder why, can you imagine on site service and support from your ISP? At a cost less than AOL? Frank gives his subscribers unlimited access for $20 per month, and visits them at home if they need it. He not only helps with installation of his service, but even has helped customers with their installations of new computers. GreeleyNet offers DSL and other high-speed lines as well.

Even if you're not a GreeleyNet subscriber, you'll enjoy their homepage,  www.GreeleyNet.com. It flashes current Greeley weather conditions, and links to the forecast. It features a number of interesting pages, including free classified ads, and a Greeley events calendar.

Frank first touched a computer in 1964, on a tour of IBM with his eighth grade math club in Seattle. Assured they couldn't hurt it, the boys took that as a challenge. Frank entered a recursion that shut down the computer and all its terminals in the building. They were ushered out.

Frank's had a lot of experience with computers since then. He was born in 1948 in Seattle and raised there. After high school he enrolled at the University of Washington, working nights at the US Post Office. Eager to see the world and escape the rain,

in 1975 he joined the US Air Force to work in communications. During his 20 years in the Air Force, he helped convert USAF communications systems from analogue to digital -- a gigantic undertaking.

During a ten-year stint in England he met the reason he's in Greeley today -- his wife, Rita. A Greeley native, Rita also was in the Air Force, and worked in communications. They married there in 1979. Five of their years in the Air Force were spent in Turkey.

Along the way Frank got a BA in Management from the University of Maryland, and an Associate of Applied Science in Information Systems Technology from the Community College of the Air Force. He's now working on his master's degree in Computer Information Systems from Regis.

Frank has been teaching many subjects at AIMS -- all the Microsoft Office applications; Windows 95, 98 and NT; and Web Design, to name a few. He's filled in for Lowell Shatraw when Lowell taught PC hardware classes there.

Frank and Rita retired from the Air Force and settled in Greeley, her hometown, in 1995. Frank bought the GreeleyNet in July 1996. A daughter goes to UNC, and a son and daughter go to Greeley Central High.

Computers are not all Frank does. He's raced motorcycles and sailboats, skied and water-skied, but his favorite hobby is what he does a lot of now -- flying sailplanes, soaring with the Colorado Soaring Association. He also enjoys tending his vegetable patch on his in-laws' farm near Greeley.

You can email Frank at (where else?) Greeley @ GreeleyNet.com, or phone him at 330-2050.