Welcome To My About Me Page!
I have always been an explorer, having the desire to find out how things work from an early age. My parents could not understand why I would take things apart and put them together. Upon graduating from High School, I decided to attend Purdue University and major in Computer Technology. I knew very little about a computer and discovered quickly this was leading edge technology. While attending the University, I worked in the computer room under the work study program. This was era of the punch card and unit record equipment.
After graduating with an Associate Degree in Applied Science, I was hired by company that did check processing for banks in the area. This was great experience to learn how the financial banking system really works. After leaving this job, I started working for the Amoco Research Center. At first I worked as laboratory technician until a job opening was available in the computer center. I was in charge of a satellite data center and supported 80 chemical engineers. I maintained the data center and designed and wrote various programs in BAL and Fortran. The concept of time sharing (aka internet) was just starting. Before leaving Amoco, I was exploring the usage of the General Electric time sharing system.
I left the Amoco Research Center in pursuit of greater opportunities and was hired as software programmer for Western Electric at their new Switching Software Center. I did mainframe programming, developing software in Cobol, meta-Cobol, RPG and PL/1. I took classes at their training facility next to Princeton University in New Jersey. I spent six months training to be an IMS Database Administrator for a project our group was developing. The project was an experimental project using the Yourdon Structured Design Methodology, code walk-through's, pseudo code, Hipo's, Mark IV, TSO, Librarian, and Unix. The goal was software engineering. During this time, programmers developed software in spaghetti manner. Software had to be constantly re-written and developed. Our projected developed modules which were shared and were structured for ease of maintenance.
After three years, the project was completed and I transferred to Lucent Technologies (formerly AT&T Bell Laboratories) and worked in the database and recent change group. I had the opportunity to work on the largest software project in the world. I developed new skill sets learning C, Awk, Shell, Ksh and multitude of hardware. Lucent Technologies is a leader in innovation and required its employees to continue their education and develop new skill sets. I completed my Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science degree and received my first patent. I soon transferred to field support where I traveled across the United States delivering new software features and hardware.
In 2001, I took an early retirement and pursued a career in Education. This sparked from a community service project I worked on while at AT&T. I was part of team that did an Adopt-A-School program. We would visit the school monthly to teach math and science to an inner city school on the south side of Chicago. I was hired as a substitute teacher for the West Aurora School District. In 2002, I was hired as permanent substitute for the district and worked in that position until 2009 where I was hired as a technology teacher for a private school, where I am still employed.
I have always enjoyed working with a computer and have had opportunity to work with the best software engineers in the world. I have personally met Grace Hopper and lived the evolution of the computer.
As Grace Hopper remarked on the Sixty Minutes television show: "We have the model-T". The computer technology is changing so rapidly, books are outdated once printed.
When I am developing software, I like think out loud in the shower or even in the car. This helps turn off distractions and allows me to focus on the problem. I am not afraid to venture into unknown areas and have been known to take projects no one else would approach.
