I am a retired Software Engineer living in Las Vegas, Nevada. I moved out west in 2004. Before that I had been living in Charlottesville VA since 1978, with 4 years spent in Frankfurt, Germany from late May 1981 to early July 1985. Before Cville I lived in Waynesboro VA from 1973. I was raised in Hampton NH.
My hobbies have always included bicycling, photography, softball, volleyball, pool, and what not. I might also mention that in earlier years I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane about 350 times. Growing up the focus was on my studies and the only sport I lettered in was wrestling which I needed for self defense purposes.
I graduated from Swarthmore College with a BA in Math in 1976. I started my career working for GE NCD - Numerical Control Division working first for two years in Business Information Services before switching to Engineering. As mentioned earlier 4 of the years were spent in Europe providing Field Service for the 1050 series of Numerical Controls. I was never all that happy with corporate America so in 1987 I left GE and started contracting - hiring myself out as a hired gun to work on various projects. The contracting took me to diverse places including Atlanta, GA 3 times, Baton Rouge, LA, Phoenix, AZ, Danbury, CN and others.
It would be remiss to not at least mention a couple of my scholastic achievements. I took the SATs my junior year of high school and got a 700 on the English and a 770 on the Math. I took some Achievements my senior year and got a 700 on the English Composition, 760 on the Physics, 800 on the Math Level II and an 800 on the German. The 800 on the German achievement leads to the fact the the national organization of teachers of German yearly administer a test with a grand prize of an all expense paid trip to Germany. I did not win the trip but one day our teacher announced that I had been one of the last 3 people to be considered for the trip and I was then presented with a book - Die BlechTrommel von Gunther Grass. So that would be third on the national exam in German. And I should mention that when I was nine I skipped the 4th grade except in Math I skipped 4 grades.
That all got started because I have a brother who is 2 years 2 months and 2 weeks older than I. When he turned five our parents decided to teach him to read. He would be entering school in the fall where they would be teaching him to read but my parents wanted to give him a head start. They placed him on the couch between them in the living room. I was placed on the floor to play so they could keep an eye on me. I could not see what they were showing him but I could hear everything. So when my brother was slow answering a question I answered for him. I was then pulled up on the couch and learned to read right along with my brother. Well the reading program was so successful that our father decided to start teaching us math. My mother bowed out because she was not interested in Math. I do not know if my brother could not handle the math or me or both but he quickly bowed out as well. So my father and I continued alone.
So while I was only tutored in Math I was definitely encouraged to read. I was allowed only one half hour of TV per week so I definitely did a lot of reading. I was essentially home schooled from age 3 to age 5 when I entered public school. My father tried to sneak me into first grade but the school board was not having it and placed me in kindergarten. Of course academically I was far beyond elementary school but the school board insisted on placing me per my calendar age and not my academic age. So I did not fit in at all. I believe I have been a round peg my entire life who has not fit very well into the square holes that society imposes.
During my early years I was tested a lot but never told what test I was taking or how well I did. "You passed with flying colors" and "Don't worry about that, just keep up the good work" were about all I ever got. My father did tell me once that I was consistently testing in the upper tenth of one percent and that is the only concrete thing I was told. I looked that up on the internet once and 1 in 1000 yields an IQ of 135 which is gifted. So I am claiming to be gifted and not a genius. However you have all the facts so you may draw your conclusions. No matter how erroneous they will be should they differ from my own, you may still draw your own conclusions.
I believe I should close out with a couple of examples from my contracting period. In Spring of 1988 I went to work at Rockwell in Duluth GA on their Hellfire missle program. I was initially put to work on the Built In Test software for the missile while the rest of the team worked on the flight software. At that time the DOD was requiring that all software be written in ADA. When they got the flight software thru functional test they ran timing on it and the inner control loop ran in 12.4 millisecs but was speced to run at under 8 millisecs. So they came to me, had me hand off the test software to someone else, and asked me to convert the flight code from ADA to assembly. Within a few weeks I got the assembly language flight software thru functional test and when we ran the timing the inner control loop ran in 4.8 millisecs, very comfortably under the 8 millisec ceiling.
In Spring of 1990 I went to work programming a Central Distribution Center in Martinsville, VA. The firm Tultex at that time manufactured all the sweat shirts sold in the US and they had contracted with Austin, a construction company to build their CDC. Austin subcontracted out the software to a firm that dropped the ball. So Tultex sued Austin and were awarded a 1 million dollar penalty per month until the CDC was completed. So Austin put together a management team from their own people and hired a bunch of software engineers to write the code. Two of us distinguished ourselves from the others and were asked to become the Fire Department and tackle any problems other people were having difficulty with. The other person demurred so I became the fire department alone. The acceptance test was to run one month of production on third shift and naturally I was put on third to support the effort. Production was started with the Case Goods subsystem and as the month progressed all the other subsystems were added. The acceptance test was successful and Austin got out from under their 1Million/Month penalty. When I came off third shift, they had to put 4 people on to replace me, one for each of the subsystems I had been supporting alone. But I was still the fire department and ended being called in on third a couple of times a week when my replacements ran into a problem they could not handle. So they were not able to replace me even with four people. I know that no one is irreplaceable but some of us can be more difficult to replace than others.