EMS helicopter pilot. Before that offshore helicopter pilot. Before that military helicopter pilot. If Uncle Sam had trained me to do something lucrative I would be doing that.
Majored in CompSci, been programming since logo on a C64 in the 3rd grade ( that should date me some ).
I've programmed professionally, but mainly do Systems Admin stuff
Hobbies include Photography, AV, and general Tweaking.
I'm a major in Psychology. I was a double major (Psychology + Computer Science) but I thought that having to write code on paper for an exam was a pain. Though the research and work I plan on doing is still computer related (Human Factors)
life: gadget freak, motorbiker (or will be when my 1995 Triumph Sprint is fixed up), father of 2.
career:
electronic engineering graduate
-> embedded micro and radio systems programmer and hardware integrator
-> internet consultant (before anyone ever heard of it) and web-site developer (remember Netscape server?)
-> senior systems admin at an ISP
-> internet consultant and web developer at a startup
-> senior systems engineer at an e-commerce division of a large bank
-> web developer at the above ISP (who went bust, got bought, sold twice)
-> senior systems engineer at an internet search start-up
phew! and I only just turned 41, so a few years left for a few more changes of career!
Education: BA in English Literature
Passion: Computers, especially the tablets
Job Title: ? ... Admin Assistant? Document Control Person? Occasional PHP/MySQL programmer?
Father of a toddler
Dabbler in everything, master of none. Therefore, extremely dangerous.
I always feel so out of place. Among techies, I'm always the one with almost no formal training. Among artsies, I'm always the hard-headed techie type. And I always know enough about a subject to enter a conversation, and then get myself in trouble.
I'm a post-doc doing mainly (active) thermography work (for non-destructive testing). Lots of data analysis, image processing, etc.
Before that PhD (vehicle driveability analysis) and degree in Mechanical Engineering with German.
I learned Basic and VB as a kid, then OPL using a succession of Psions (Psion Organiser II, Psion 3, 3a, 5), programming using VB/VBA for my father's company (wrote stock control and invoicing system for a car dealership as the car supplier didn't do one and I said I could do better than paper stock records - interesting work, especially talking to the non-computer literate people who were using my system to work out what they wanted/didn't want).
At uni did some placement work writing/tweaking CFD code (FORTRAN) and now deal mainly in MATLAB and Simulink with a bit of C and C++ thrown in for good measure. I learned C to program my Zaurus and picked up C++ along the way as some of the day-job involves tweaking other companies' code to do what I want it to.
I'm a senior programmer/analyst for a medium sized life insurance company in New York State, USA. I program in C++, VB, Java, and Cobol. My first PC was a Radio Shack TRS80, which I upgraded to 16k of RAM. I wrote an arcade game for the Commodore 128, which was published in Compute's Gazette Magazine. I run Linux on my home PC's (and N800) and love it because it makes computers fun again. Just like the TRS80, C64, and C128, I can tinker and configure for hours on end and never get bored with it!
