About
Many moons ago, I watched a TV show called Whiz Kids. It had that kid, Albert, from Little House on the Prairie who graduated from shoveling hay to being a computer nerd helping solve modern day injustices. That show ignited an interest, fostered by an IBM employee who was a parent of one of the kids in my 5th grade class who donated time to teach a small group of kids how to use a computer. Once a week he would cart an original IBM PC to a classroom in the rural Texas elementary school and teach us the intricacies of DOS and how a computer functions.
A year or so later, I received my first computer, an Atari 800XL with a tape drive along with a subscription to Compute! magazine. The obsession had begun.
Entering games in assembly from the Compute! magazines was entertaining and all, but the real fun began when I discovered the world of BBS’s. The local library had a PC XT clone with a 300bps Hayes Modem. A summer spent at the library opened up the world of online communication and the phenomenon known as bulletin board systems. From then on until the pervasiveness of the Internet, my time was spent either programming BBS systems or games, participating in BBS communications, or running my own BBS. From Atari to IBM to Commodore to my precious Amigas, from Basic to Pascal to Modula-2 to C to C++, every moment not already committed to the normal activities of a teenager or college student was usurped in all things computer.
My hobby led to a career, so far spent in IT and software development (primarily C++ and Java), including a stint at Electronic Arts, working on games – the pinnacle of software development geekness. Today, I spend my days managing a group of dedicated developers of varying skillsets and expertise. While I rarely get to exercise my development skills at work as I have in the past, most of my non-sleeping hours not dedicated to my young son, daughter and wonderful wife are spent toiling away at the computer. Today, my computer is actually a trio of Mac’s and an iPad and my development platform of choice is Objective-C & Cocoa
While computers and technology have been the backbone of my life, my heart belongs to my daughter, Anne, son, Davis, and to my lovely wife of over 15 years and going, Julie.
This blog is more about a place for me to document my own traversal of life as an archive for me to reflect upon. Yes, like every other blogger, I’m narcissistic and self-conceited. Actually, it’s my hope that some of my lessons learned may prove useful to someone other than myself. Whether it be some technical hint that I discover or a life lesson delivered by my children or wife or the wine du-jour. It’s also a place to vent about the world around me.
So, what do I expect to put here? Things that interest me… computers and the computer industry primarily; Macs, iPhone, iPad, programming, gaming… although pretty much anything is fair game.
…and very rarely… politics. I’m an anti-corporation, generally pro-market, left-leaning minarchist libertarian who believes in self-ownership, individual responsibility, personal liberty, and the non-aggression principal. I believe the two biggest evils facing this nation currently are the neoconservatives (and their corresponding beliefs of imperialism, fascism, authoritarianism, and the complete and utter destruction of the Bill of Rights) and government protected / fostered corporations (see: greed, corruption). I believe the government has an important place in society (even if a small one), and should focus on the roles of public health and safety – including universal health care. I’m trying my best to keep my political content on this blog limited to the above paragraph, since my greatest interest – computers and the computer industry – are generally politically agnostic!
Welcome to my little diary of life – and hope you find something worth reading.
