Introduction

I'm a retired software engineer living in Cary, NC (near Raleigh) with my wife Linda and our cats Cricket and Austin. We also had three other cats, Cynthia, Darcy, and Swanie, who have passed on to the Rainbow Bridge.

I was born and raised in Lockport, NY (near Buffalo and Niagara Falls).

Education

I graduated from Lockport Senior High School in the Class of 1966. I earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) (Troy, NY) in 1970 and an M.S. degree in Computing and Information Science from Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) (Cleveland, OH) in 1991, through an on-site Masters degree program at Bell Laboratories in Columbus, OH.

I also took four pre-MBA courses at Gannon College (now Gannon University) (Erie, PA) and five computer science courses at The Ohio State University (OSU) (Columbus, OH).

Employment

Over the years I've worked as:

• A central office equipment engineer and electronic switching systems technical support engineer (including software debugging and programming) at GTE General Telephone Company of Pennsylvania in Erie, PA (step-by-step and Strowger Automatic Toll Ticketing switching equipment, No. 1 EAX switching system, ETS-4 switching system, Remote Monitor and Control System (RMCS), HP-2100 minicomputers, DEC PDP-11/34 minicomputer),

• A software developer at the ITT Advanced Technology Center (ATC) in Shelton, CT (ITT-1240 switching system),

• A systems engineer at the ITT North Electric Company in Delaware, OH (ITT-1210 and ITT-1240 switching systems),

• A software planner and software developer at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Columbus, OH (Multifunction Operations System, MFOS, and Common Network Interface, CNI, subsystem of AT&T 1AESS, 4ESS, 5ESS and Autoplex switching systems, 2STP signal transfer point, and 1ANCP network control point),

• A software developer at Bell Northern Research (BNR)/Nortel Networks in Research Triangle Park, NC (DMS-100 switching system and Next Generation Network (NGN) Distributed Access Multiservice Platform (DA-MSP)), and

• A software developer at Corona Networks in Cary, NC (ISP 12000 IP network edge router).

I've done software development in the C, C++, CHILL, and PROTEL/PROTEL-2 high level programming languages and multiple assembly languages. I've also programmed in FORTRAN and PL/I for class assignments at RPI and OSU respectively, and had exposure to/training on Smalltalk at BNR.

I've worked with/programmed under the Unix, Linux, Microsoft Windows, RSX-11M, VxWorks, pSOS and other operating systems, including an operating system of my own design for the HP-2100 minicomputer.

I continue to learn about computer programming and and related technologies. Over the past few years I've been learning Java, PHP, the Apache web server, CSS, and Git/GitHub. I have a large collection of books on programming languages, operating systems, networking and related topics, and have read/studied many of the books.

I've enjoyed programming and computers since the early 1970s and continuing to the present day. Excluding high school and RPI college assignments, my first programming was 400AP assembly language programming for the GTE Automatic Electric No. 1 EAX switching system.

Family History/Genealogy

Besides my ongoing interests in computers, programming and related subjects (including telecommunications), I also have a strong interest in family history/genealogy. This interest began in 2003 and has continued ever since. (Linda had already been involved in genealogy for a number of years prior to 2003.)

I'm also interested in unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and other "new age" topics such as crop circles, ancient aliens, reincarnation, and near-death experiences.