Step Into the Way-Back Machine...

My mother used to tell a story about the first day I went to kindergarten. I stepped off the bus and said, "I'm not going back there ever again!" When she asked why, I said, "Because they haven't taught me how to read yet!"

When I went to grade school, they had two libraries, one for the first through third graders and one for the fourth through sixth graders. By the middle of second grade I had read all of the science books in the first library. For some stupid reason, they wouldn't let me go to the other library till I was in fourth grade. So, I started going to the public library. I practically lived in that place. All the librarians knew me by name. I read everything I could get my hands on that had anything to do with science or how to do practically anything, plus lots of science fiction. I'm not saying I was a prodigy or anything. There were always a few kids who got better grades than me. I guess I just cared more about the "big picture."

High-school was the absolute worst time of my life. Let's just leave it at that.

When I went to college, the first time, I majored in biology in the pre-med program. I was going to be a transplant surgeon. The program was incredibly focused on chemistry and I got the clue that I was being trained to be nothing more than a dispensing arm of the pharmaceutical industry. That, compounded with the articles I was reading about doctors being sued for malpractice by the AMA for not performing unnecessary hysterectomies, really turned me off to the medical industry. I liked computers and a friend even hinted that I could transfer over to his college and get in on the ground floor of a new computer science program they were starting just for him. But I thought that actually working in computers would be nothing more than rearranging lists of data on green and white striped paper for businesses. Not a lot of foresight there, I can tell you. So, when I got a summer job fixing burglar alarms that paid more than I had ever made before, I decided to just keep it and not return to school. That's right, I dropped out after 2 years with a 3.65 GPA. What the he** was I thinking?

Got married, got divorced, joined the Marine Corps and kept A-6s from falling out of the sky over Irvine, CA for four years. When I left, they asked me if they could keep my notes and diagrams. Not because they were classified any more, but because they said they were better and more understandable than what the government provided.

Work LIfe:

After the Marine Corps I got a great job working at the California Museum of Science and Industry in Los Angeles back in 1988. It was like a dream come true for a complete science geek like me. They told me that all my hobbies and all those books I had read about how to do stuff was what really sold them. Within three weeks they promoted me to Assistant Supervisor of the Technical Services Department. We used to say that was the department that fixed anything that did anything. While there I got the opportunity to help draw up specifications for minimum requirements for all future exhibits. I also learned a lot about designing exhibits for best educational value. But I got homesick for Kansas City and let my family convince me to move back home.

I did some electronics work then started working for a printed-circuit-board manufacturing company. After plotting film to make circuit boards for 3 years I convinced them that they needed a real network manager and that person should be me. With no real training I learned how to administer an AIX system and how to set up a Novell network. After working there for seven years with only one 3% raise I decided to move on. I got a job at some other manufacturing plant but when I was offered a position as the network manager of a small hospital, I jumped at the chance. I was able to take a network that had been going down three times a day and clean it up so that it didn't go down for over a year. But the politics got to me and I decided it was time to go back to school. I sold my house, gave away a lot of my stuff and was all set to move to Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, the home of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, where the first Mosaic web browser was invented.

Love Intervenes, but Finally Back to School

Just before I moved, I met a woman and fell in love with her. She lived in Lawrence, Kansas so, in the late Fall of 1999, I moved there instead. I worked for a small computer consulting firm for a while before starting my own business. The owner said he didn't mind. He was more interested in helping his son build a new business based on one of his inventions anyway. I tell people I successfully ran a small business for three years. Then I unsuccessfully ran a small business for two years after that. The problem was that I made people's computers too darn reliable and I didn't know how to get new customers fast enough. I essentially worked myself out of a job. I lost everything: my house, my car, and most of my stuff. In the process, a friend of mine suggested that if there was ever a time to go back to school, this would be it. After being dirt poor for two years I was able to get plenty of financial aid. By the way, the woman and I broke up but we are still good friends.

Necessity is a mother

When I first started back to school I wanted to be a physicist. I was working on two majors, math and computer science. I wanted to get those degrees first, before even starting on the physics because the kind of physics I wanted to work on would require lots of math and lots of computation. But I couldn't learn the math fast enough. I was still getting 'A's but it was taking me six grueling hours almost every night to grind my way through the textbooks. Math has never been my strong suit, but this was ridiculous. Some of the explanations were so terse as to be indecipherable. So I dropped the math major and just stuck with the computer science merely because it was something I could do. I was heartbroken.

I tried continuing on with just the Computer Science degree but I just couldn't see going to school for two or three more years, learning things I didn't really want to know just to have a degree in something that would get me a job writing code I didn't care about for someone I didn't care for. On top of that, the textbooks still weren't any better, and - I have to say - the quality of the education I was receiving was not what I had expected, to say the least. As they say necessity is the mother of invention. I remember, I actually said out loud, "There has got to be a better way!" and I sat down to figure one out. That is how DEMML™ was born.

After I invented DEMML™, I wanted to take some classes in Education to learn how to design DEMML to best suit the needs of the Education community. I was told I would have to apply for and be accepted to the School of Education. One of the requirements was to volunteer 80 hours working with kids... just to take a couple of classes. Finally, a friend told me about Washburn University in Topeka, KS. They have a program where you can design your own degree, called the Bachelors of Integrated Studies. I transferred the very next semester.

Two more moves

I started at Washburn in January of 2008 and I really liked it. The teachers had far more time for their students and I could take all kinds of classes. Anything that I thought would help me to finish DEMML™ properly. I have taken Educational Psychology, Educational Technology, The Psychology of Learning (which turned out to be about Behavioral Psychology rather than Cognitive Psychology), and even Grant Writing. My capstone project was the creation of part of the XML Schema for DEMML™. I have finished all of my requirements for my major (with all As I might add) and now just need five more credits of upper-division courses to finally earn my Bachelor's Degree. The freedom to learn what I want has really been great!

While in Topeka I had met a woman and fell in love. After being together for a couple of years she told me that she had Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and had to move to Tucson, AZ. I decided to move with her. After all, I loved her and thought we would be building a life together.

The Church of "What's Happening Now" and Looking Back

(That's an old Flip Wilson reference.) Unfortunately, the move has induced over a year of additional delay in earning my degree. Finding a job here in Tucson has been a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. There are jobs, but most of them require very specific knowledge, skills, degrees, or certifications that I just don't have. Throughout my career I have depended on my successes in one job to help me get that next job. I never put much stock in spending lots of money to pile on the certifications. I would say I had been wrong, except that I had been getting burned out on the whole network management thing anyway.Running around, unbreaking the same things over and over again can get a little tiresome regardless of how "high tech" those things are. Besides, what I have really wanted to do all along is work on new ideas, create new things, and work to help the whole world rather than just one company, even if that company was my own.So, putting my career on hold to go back to school has really put a damper on things, especially since I haven't yet finished that degree.

There are may other jobs for which I am more than qualified, but that is the problem. Employers seem to assume I will jump ship just as soon as I can get a job doing what I used to do. They don't realize the chances of that are slim to none. In addition, my knees are going bad, fast; so I can't stand for very long at all. All in all, it makes for some pretty bad job prospects.

Now, on top of everything else, that woman - for whom I moved all the way out here to Tucson - has decided that she "doesn't do very well in relationships." I cannot even begin to understand or explain how all this makes me feel, but "overjoyed" is not a word I would use. The one thing I can say is that she was definitely correct.

I have finally gotten a temporary job "shoveling" paperwork for the local gas company. It pays the bills but not a lot more. So, I am working on ways to get together enough money to move to Berkeley, CA. I feel that the Bay Area is one of the few areas in the country where I will actually fit in. Where I will be able to get the help I need to get DEMML™ off the ground. I have been trying to do it all on my own but it is just too much. I need help and advice from people who have done these kinds of things before.

"What is your best skill?"

Don't you hate those kinds of questions? In every job I ever had, I was the guy who would finally get around to documenting what others had just been keeping in their heads. I was the one to work out systems of organizing information and systems for using that information. When the printed-circuit-board manufacturer bought a new enterprise-wide database and accounting system, the vendor said they would have to send a team of consultants to spend six months configuring the product to our specific needs. I did it in three weeks. While at the same time designing the floor plans of all the cubicle spaces so that we could use all the parts from the previous building most efficiently, finishing up the installation of the network, and installing the phone system. Before that I had helped with the ISO-9000 certification. At the hospital, no one knew where any of the cables went in the whole darn campus. I documented and labeled everything. I just have a weird knack for organizing things and systems. Maybe it is a little bit OCD and a little bit of seeing the big picture. I don't know. But it works for me.

Next, you can read about: How I invented DEMML™...