Hello, I am Paul Stephen, and this is my personal website.

Professional Background

I am an information technology professional with over a quarter century of experience.  I started my career as a programmer, though I have been programming all my life, starting as a child in the 1980s with LOGO and BASIC.  I knew my career path when I learned Pascal in high school.

I earned my Bachelors of Science in Computer Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology in 1997 and a Masters of Business Administration from Northeastern Illinois University in 2002.  I am also a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) from the Project Management Institute.

After graduating from IIT in ’97 I immediately went to work for Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) based in Chicago.  I started as a programmer and quickly was involved in Y2K efforts.  In 2000, Exelon was formed from the merger of ComEd and Philadelphia-based PECO, and I joined Exelon Nuclear IT support and later corporate IT support.  In the ensuring decades I partook in a variety of information technology roles, primarily for the work management and finance corporate areas, from application support to IT project management.

For the past several years I supported Exelon’s corporate IT security systems.  In February 2022, Exelon spun off its generation businesses into a new company, Constellation Energy, and I joined the Constellation IT corporate group supporting security.  I currently help support the corporate security systems for Constellation as well as Exelon during their post-split transition period.

Personal Interests

If you peruse this website, you will quickly learn of my interest in astronomy.  I have always been fond of outer space, but truly rekindled the interest when I built my 254mm Dobsonian in 2016.  Since then I have written hundreds of blog posts on my astronomical adventures and pursuits in astrophotography, all of which are available for your reading here.

Beyond astronomy, I regularly practice on my guitars, a hobby I took up in my thirties.  And I frequenty work on all of my computers, dividing attention among Windows, MacOS, and Ubuntu.  My homemade Windows/Linux desktop gets most of that attention though, especially as I try to get more of my Windows applications to run under Wine in Ubuntu.  Last but not least, I have always been an avid video gamer, and these days I play mostly on Steam.

I would be remiss if I did not also mention that I am an Eagle Scout.  As my Scoutmaster had said, it will be on my resume the rest of my life, and I consider this website, in a way, to be a modern incarnation of that expression.

About this Website

Paul Stephen’s Journal is my own personal, self-hosted website. Every article allows for visitor comments.  To understand all of the specifics about signing up and interacting with my website, please see the Welcome page.

I encourage everyone to read my Data & Privacy policy.

Paul Stephen’s Journal is my own website and all comments and opinions here (except visitors’ comments on my posts/articles, which are their own) are mine and not affiliated with any organization.

Regards, and see you on the site!

– Paul Stephen