Each issue of OFF! highlights a someone who has achieved success in his/her field. This issue's pick is Rich Comeau of Cape Girardeau.

THE STATS: Married for 9 years with a son, Danny, age 7, aka Mr. Manners

An alphabet lesson: a is for acoustics, b is for bacteria.

Normally I do a Q and A during the Profiler; but this man was so interesting I though I should write a bona fide article about him. Rich Comeau is one of the most intriguing men I have met in Cape. His versatility, wit and good humor is surpassed only by his BGQ (Brainiac Geek Quotient).

We sat in his recording studio to talk. Right after we sat down, the phone rang. It was his mother. He told her he was being inteviewed and initially she thought I was there to discuss something about the column he writes for the Southeast Missourian each month (Monday's high tech column).

He speaks of his parents with love and gratitude when it comes to his school days. "They were very gracious," he said when talking about the seven years he spent in college; first at Brigham Young (the only school that offered a degree in Recording Engineering) then to Columbia and finishing here in Cape (I assume at SEMO unless there is a think tank hidden here in town). He now has degrees in computer science and electrical engineering.

His family arranged a trip to Nashville when he was 16 for some professional experience. During that time he was able to assist in mixing a recording of Merle Haggard and was also admitted into the lush forest in the heart of Nashville where Hee Haw was filmed. "It just goes to show you," he said to me, "that if you have enough money you can have a forest complete with log cabins in the middle of a city." He told me of the writer's building, where dozens of writers sat at gen-u-ine typewriters frantically typing out jokes and sketches...yelling "YES" or "no" and tossing them on the floor. Rich said he was knee deep in paper as they typed and tossed joke after joke.

During his college days he wrote the software programs that taught programmers how to design software programs.(HUH?) He said his parents often chided him for not studying enough. He said, "college is for fun; it isn't time for studying." He did have time however, to develop software for an 82,000 client base, in 56 countries, in four languages aside from English.

This floored me. "Eighty-two Thousand customers???? Didn't you make any money at that?" Rich laughed as he answered, "I squandered most of it, isn't that what your college years are for? If I saved a third of the money I made during school; I would be ROLLIN' in it."

Since his college days he has been extremely busy. He wrote one of the 12 diskettes for DB4, the largest selling database in the world. He did some work for Quarterdeck. He wrote a data encryption program for the NSA. He did the entire billing system for LDD. For 3 1/2 years he was Chief Scientist and Director of R & D for Horizon Music. It was while at Horizon he did the Bill Gates Project, doing all the miscellaneous work for Gates' fully automated house. Bill also used Rich's mic preamp for his father's birthday party. That preamp was Comeau's first patent.

His second patent was for a process to eliminate e-coli and salmonella in kitchens. This process will be approved by the FDA February 22nd. It uses ultraviolet light to irradiate the bacteria. "Many people panic when they hear the word radiation. This is the same thing as the sunlight you are exposed to every day. If people say they don't want their food irradiated, I just tell them that every container of bottled water they buy is irradiated with UV light, and they love their water.People can read all about it on my website. www.digitallabs.com There are even the FDA links they can check out."

Looking around at all the cables and musical instruments and "gear," it was hard to meld these two extremely different sides of Rich. "Soooo, what about the music?"

"Ahh, the music is what keeps me sane. This is what I love. It is what keeps me from putting a bullet in my head. I guess I didn't squander ALL of my college proceeds. I bought this equipment. Everything here is state of the art. Digital, computerized fiber optic recording. We do all the standards here...rock, blues, jazz, country, contemporary Christian. The only thing we don't do here is rap. I am too old for rap.

"The big difference here is when a band comes out to record, they are playing like it is a live performance. They are all together, not separated into their own individual booths. They can see the expressions on each others faces when they are playing. We don't mess around with tape. Tape for music recording is old news. This gives pure digitized sound. I do have a vocal booth though."

His vocal booth is a room with 22' ceiling and free hanging bass traps (I saw them but don't understand them). "The booth came out of a concept I had when I was doing the mixing for Merle Haggard."

I looked around at all the instruments and asked, "What instrument do you play?"

"All of them" was his reply. "But the bass is the instrument for me. I need the Thump." His guitar is a poured carbon neck model that never warps or bends and is thinner.

His band "Area 51" has played all over Cape. He has formed a new band called Thor's Hammer. I am sure it will be as impressive as he is.

What's next? He told me his third patent was approved Feb 1st. It is called an active direct box for acoustic guitars. It enables an acoustic to become electric without compromising the acoustic sound and eliminates any problem with battery power since it can be plugged in directly to any system for recording.

As for what's on the horizon for him?

"Well, I am looking for something new to work on. I always have to have a project going."

I can only say that whatever it may be, it will be something pretty impressive.