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This is a brief summary of me.

I did not start out intending to be a programmer. When I was younger, my main interest was music. This may have been because there was always music in my house. Not music from the radio or the record player. My father and his brothers were always singing and playing guitars. In fact, when they first arrived in the US, they supplemented their income by performing music at parties, dances, and for other audiences.

With this all around me, it should come as no surprise that I jumped into music when the opportunity presented itself. That first opportunity (as far as I can recall) came during the 4th grade. There I was in Mrs. Atkins class in Point Arena Elementary School, when she brought out a bunch of recorders. You know, those little plastic flute-like instruments that you see little kids playing all over the place. Well, that was me. And I loved it.

Later, we moved to the "big city" of Ukiah, in Northern California. There, took up the clarinet. Ah yes, the clarinet. That bastion of polka bands everywhere. Well, I got pretty good, considering that I never had a private teacher. Just the kindness of my elementary, junior high, and high school teachers. Along the way, I picked up the saxophone, and even gave piano a try. I loved music so much that I was sure that I would be playing music the rest of my life. Unfortunately, that was not to be.

During my senior year at Piner High School, I had to apply to university. My parents were immigrants who spent most of their life in the US working in the fields. Although they had unlimited love for me and my siblings, there was only so much they could offer in the area of academic counseling. With a High School counselor that was less than worthless, I was truly unprepared to begin my college application process. After filling out some applications and visiting a campus or two, I decided that I would attend Sonoma State University. Then it happened.

I got down to the part on the form labelled "Major". Remember how I did not have a good couselor? Well, one of the things that they could have told me was that I could enter University with a major of Undelcared. Things may have turned out differently. Regardless, I wrote down Physics on the form and the rest is history. From there on, music was pushed further and further aside.

Music was replaced with code. During my sophmore year, I had to take a class in FORTRAN 77. I did OK in that class (I may have got a B). But it opened my eyes to programming and computers. Later, I had the opportunity to take a class in 8052 assembler using an Apple IIe. This class required us to interface a computer with various lab instruments. Basically, an analog-to-digital class. But it got me hooked.

Next came a stint in the Navy (highlghts here). My last assignment was with the 1st Marine Division, in the Communication-Electronics Officer's (CEO) staff. There I was nothing more than a paper-pusher. But I was exposed the the Information Management Officer's (IMO) staff. These guys were a bunch of coders who worked with some of the latest technology seen by anyone. I'd love to see what they are working with today! On my way out, I was talking with one of the better coders (my impression) about programming. I mentioned that I had taken a class or two in college. I asked him which language he liked to work in. He responded that he works in Pascal, but that he prefres C. At that time, I thought that "C" was short for COBOL. Once he stopped laughing, I was intrigued.

I marched over to my local PC store, and bought a mean 8088 running at 10MHz with a full 640 MB of RAM. What a screamer! About a week after I bought the PC, I went back to the store and bought a copy of Turbo C 2.0. The rest, as they say, is history.

What would I change? I think that I would like to get back into music. Of course, that would mean that I need to spend less time working on pages like this one in my "off time" and more time having fun. Hmm......