My name is Randy A. Tarpley but I am called RAT in part from my initials and also because I used that name in high school to keep from signing my whole name and to agitate the teachers ! Later in life after becoming heavily involved in the trail community of the Appalachian Trail, I adopted the trail name of ‘RAT > PATROL’ (nothing to do with the old TV show of that same name) and almost everyone who knows me calls me RAT.

I was born in Radford, Virginia in 1962 but moved to Johnson City, TN. in 1964. My dad was a full professor at E.T.S.U. until he retired, and I attended University High (college preparatory school) for 12 years, but opted to dropout in my senior year and run a bit a-muck. I later grew up some and went back to school to learn some machine shop skills and worked in that field for awhile until opening my own paint and body shop car repair business in the 80`s. I was born into a mechanical and musical family and learned guitar (and many other instruments) at the early age of 5 and started playing professionally at age 12. For more details on this part of my life please see http://www.guitar-antics.com

I now work for Lunarpages.com a web hosting company in California as a remote billing customer service representative. They host all my sites since I have tried many hosts over my years of designing websites and I find them to be the best host for my needs for the money.

I have created this site for my more miscellaneous personal needs, rantings and projects as to separate those from my other non related sites that I have been using for those purposes.