FlipSide

Federal Computer Week is taking to the airwaves again with the second year of  “Trends in Government Technology.”

The program airs on Washington radio station WFED-AM 1050, known as Federal News Radio, and is archived at FCW.com. For the second year, Adam Tuss will be the host of the program.

Much has happened in the past year during which Tuss worked as a part-time reporter for WFED and its sister station, the all-new WTOP, often taking the weekend shift. We thought this would be a good chance to touch base with Tuss and his fiancee, Caroline Baker, a teacher for the Fairfax County, Va., school system.

FCW: So what has happened in the past year?
Tuss: A lot has happened. The biggest thing is that I got engaged to Caroline Baker, my longtime girlfriend/sweetheart. But I’ve also become a full-time reporter at WTOP. I’m the sprawl-and-crawl reporter. So I get my weekends back. I’ve also grown my hair out long. So there are a number of things that have happened, but they are all good things.

FCW: For people who don’t live in Washington, what do you mean by sprawl-and-crawl reporter?
Tuss: Sprawl and crawl is one of those topics that everybody can relate to. You have transportation and transit problems, which is the crawl, and development and housing issues, which is the sprawl. So you have vast, expanding cities, and nowhere are those issues more prevalent than here in Washington, where we have all this development and all these extra cars being put onto the roads. It is really an important beat that the station has been missing for a bit, and I’m excited to take it over.

FCW: Caroline, so you just got engaged a few weeks ago. Tell us about how it happened.
Baker: Adam and I decided to go on a vacation over my spring break. We went to Ireland for the week. The weather was really incredible. It was sunny and warm the whole time.
Tuss: We had prepared for the driving wind and rain, and we didn’t ever have to deal with it.
Baker: The last day of our trip, we decided to stay in Dublin. We got there early in the day, and we decided to visit St. Stephen’s Green in the center of the city. And right under this tree, Adam took me totally by surprise by getting down on one knee and proposing. He then told me that we had lunch reservations at a wonderful hotel nearby. When we got to the hotel, everybody knew what was happening, so we had this great welcome. We walked into the hotel, and there were my parents, my sister and Adam’s parents. They had never met before, but they had spent the week together traveling through Ireland…getting to know each other. I was absolutely shocked.

FCW: And so you had no idea this was coming?
Baker: I had no idea. Apparently everybody else had known for a month, but I had no idea.

“Trends in Technology” airs on Federal News Radio each Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. EDT. The programs are also archived on FCW.com at www.fcw.com/multimedia.