I'm Tim Messer. I live in Naperville, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago. I have lived in northern Illinois all my life, growing up in a town of 2,500 people called Polo.

By day, I am a Linux system administrator at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. By evening and the occasional weekend, I try to be active in my community. I'm a director of the Naperville Area Homeowners Confederation, a group whose goal is to foster communication between associations and local officials. I'm the president of my neighborhood association, which has the Naperville Historic District in its boundaries. Previously, I spent seven years as a Planning and Zoning Commissioner for the City of Naperville, and six of those years as the PZC representative on the Historic Preservation Commission.

I have been told I have an unusual set of hobbies. I am a trained storm spotter and have chased tornadoes with the College of DuPage. As a ham radio operator, I lend my time and skills to the communications unit of the Naperville Emergency Management Agency, and I used to edit the newsletter for the DuPage Amateur Radio Club. I go Geocaching. I have been to all 30 Major League Baseball parks. And I love road trips: I've been to 50 states, including all 102 counties of my home state.

The background photo was taken by Greg Hitchcock; the design of this site comes from The Personal Page.

You can if you want. I am also on Twitter. I take pictures and put them on Flickr, but I am not very good at uploading them regularly.