John Flannagan is an informational technology consultant in the School of Education. He lived part of his life in the Mojave Desert and still has strong ties to that land. He now lives in the Willamette Valley, out in the country where he can garden.
When John Flannagan was 5 years old, he lived with his family in the Mojave Desert along legendary Route 66 of music and television fame. Now, he spends his time in the rain of Bellfountain, Ore., and commutes to work at the University of Oregon where he is an informational technology consultant.
Flannagan’s family owned a gas station and garage in Cadiz Summit, 20 miles east of Barstow, Calif. They ran the business and lived next door. Sometimes customers would barter for gasoline if they didn’t have the money, or the Flannagan family needed something they wanted to trade.
Flannagan cherishes the time he spent exploring the high desert with his grandfather. The two would walk together, or drive his grandfather’s Cadillac overland.
“We found Apache tears,” Flannagan said, referring to the pieces of obsidian they hunted. He learned a lot about geology and mineralogy from his grandfather as well.
They had no local water. The water had to be trucked in, using their 500-gallon water-tank truck.
“It was like a sprinkler going up the road–it had so many holes,” Flannagan said.
The entire 500 gallons of water cost a mere 25 cents.
Their house was built out of old railroad ties, chicken wire and plaster. They had an icehouse, which was cooled by a running water system.
Little is left of the home and garage now, a foundation and some steps. After the freeway was put in, few people traveled that part of Route 66, and businesses along the highway died. There’s barely enough left now to call it a ghost town, but Flannagan’s family still owns 160 acres there.
According to Flannagan, his family owns the land patent on it. “We own it through to the center of the earth,” Flannagan said.
“A land patent is something carried over from old England. (It involves) the divine right of ownership. We can sell it, and can sell pieces of it. The government cannot take the land away from you for any reason. You cannot buy new land like that anymore. You can’t own it to the center of the earth,” Flannagan said.
Flannagan doesn’t think the land is worth much these days, but there was a time when it was mined for gold, silver, lead and gypsum.
Later, Flannagan’s family moved to Texas, where his father opened an electronics business. Flannagan’s plan was to take over the business, but his father sold it.
So, he moved to Eugene eight years ago, and in 2006 bought the house and property near the small town of Bellfountain, north of Eugene. His commute to work takes 45 minutes to an hour each way, depending on the traffic.
It wasn’t hard to find fellow UO employees in his neighborhood to carpool with. When Flannagan would spot a car with a UO parking sticker on it, he’d follow them to their house and introduce himself.
“There are three people who work in the College of Education who live in Bellfountain,” Flannagan said.
Flannagan loves living in the country because he has things to build, and places to put what he builds. On his own property he’s built a greenhouse, shed and chicken coop. Some days he gardens before work and after coming home from work. Weekends are spent in the peace and joy living in the country gives him.
Flannagan is a man of medium build who smiles easily and speaks deliberately. In his working world he explains technology to people who don't understand it as well as he does. He listens as people try to explain what their computer is doing that it didn’t used to do. He tries to fix it. If he can’t, he tries DeptComp.
Watch John Flannagan talk about DeptComp.
DeptComp stands for Departmental Computing Group, which is the group of campus computer support professionals. They share information and ideas in a spirit of generosity and cooperation. When Flannagan talks about DeptComp, it reminds you of the trading that went on with the family business on Route 66.
Flannagan wants the UO community to know what a great job the University is doing with technology.
“Eighty-five percent of the e-mail to the University doesn’t get delivered because it is spam that has been filtered out by uoregon.edu administrators. They do a phenomenal job of balancing what’s filtered and what’s not filtered. They do allow you, I might add….they even let you go in and customize your spam filtering e-mail,” Flannagan said.
One of the more interesting projects Flannagan has worked on in the College of Education is figuring out how to do videoconferencing with Taiwan.
Professor Martin Kaufman needed to set up visual and audio communication with a colleague in Taiwan and brought the problem to Flannagan.
“My part was to figure out how they could see each other and talk to each other. It took about a week. It’s tough to get a hold of China, because of the time difference,” Flannagan said.
Flannagan was able to set up the videoconferencing with Kaufman's colleague in Taiwan.
