By vocation, Mike is a public safety software designer and programmer for Pamet Systems, Inc., based in Acton, Massachusetts. He has designed, written, and implemented his company's FireServer VMS package and many aspects of its PoliceServer VMS package, both of which are in use at more than one hundred fifty agencies in the U.S. In the 1980s, he served occasionally as a federally-approved expert witness and independent consultant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Defense Criminal Investigative Service, assisting and training Special Agents and federal district prosecutors as well as testifying in successful investigations of defense contract fraud totaling approximately $300 million.
By avocation, Mike's a chef, artist, writer, traveler, and something
of a historian of Project Apollo and of the Eighth Air Force in World
War 2. His interest in Apollo began in earnest when Frank Borman, Bill Anders, and Jim Lovell orbited the moon when he was nine years old, and hasn't waned since. Several of his detailed WWII-style flight
jacket pin-up paintings can be seen on the front cover, title spread,
and inside Hell-Bent for Leather (Nelson & Parsons), a history of flight jackets, and his jacket artwork has also been featured in several periodicals. He has also provided occasional research assistance to other aviation history authors such as the late Jeff Ethell. His latest artwork is still of beautiful women but is all pencil in nature, which he says is "much cleaner and infinitely less nerve-wracking" than painting on $400 flight jackets.
Mike's other interests include films and cartoons of the '30s and '40s, photography, massage therapy, and journalism. He says "The Larry Sanders Show" and "Mystery Science Theater 3000" were "the best TV shows on -- and off -- the planet." He's been an avid follower and booster of Progressive Bluegrass and especially its little-known yet rich cousin, New Acoustic Music (a.k.a. Americana), for years. He prefers to cook in the manner of his hero, Julia Child, and says that he will someday own his own restaurant with, he hopes, an attached art gallery and massage therapy office. Mike has contributed to the comprehensive All-Music Guide and has been quoted in USA Today, Variety, TV Guide, and Multichannel News, proving that, even in the \ willy-nilly '90s, the occasional desperately slow news day still occurs.
Mike's world wide web site, The Finley Quality Network (named after the fictional network of the Bob & Ray radio show), was selected as one of the "Top 5% of All Web Sites" in both the Movies & Television and Personal Home Page categories by Lycos/Point, whose review began: "Mike Harney's work here is just what we want out of a personal homepage -- packed with information and stuffed with yuks."