Who I am

I was a child of the 1960s & 1970s, from a family on the poorer side of the middle class. Where my secret escapist dream was to travel the world and see all the sights, but the sad reality was that back then I didn’t ever really believe it could be possible.

My first love (or maybe fascination) was for those little boxes with switches and lights in the school’s fledgling computer lab. They had names like IMSAI & Altair with strange, automated typewriter interfaces. But alas, nobody from my economic level could ever own one of these things.

Then one day I ran off to join the military (National Guard) for the promise of computer operations training, which I literally absorbed without even trying. So much so that I was the honor graduate of my class. But at the end of the day, one can’t survive and make a living as a weekend warrior no matter how good at the job you may be.

From there difficult choices had to be made, and a lot of years went by where I was barely surviving, including a few times being virtually homeless. Until one day I applied for a Windows OS tech support role where the first interview was a five page written test on DOS.

Honestly, I despaired at passing this test while I was taking it even through DOS is what I learned as a military computer mainframe operator. So much time had passed since then, but apparently, I actually aced this test and got offered the job.

And that tech support job started the progression of positions which led to the senior IT systems engineering roles I work in today. But even better, now I make a good enough living that a poor child’s impossible dreams to travel the world can also be fulfilled too.