My Background

I've been immersed in computers and technology for the great bulk of my life. From starting with analog and digital electronics at age 10, to my first introduction to computers at age 14, to UNIX and C programming in 1981, technology has been life. This page gives some background on how I got where I am now.

College Years

[Kent State University] I received a bachelor's degree in Mathematics/Computer Science in 1989 from Kent State University in Kent Ohio. My degree took a few years longer than usual due to consulting work and relocation to Southern California to start a business, but I got a great formal education that has served me well. My father taught on campus and won a Distinguished Teaching Award in 1973.

During college I worked at Telxon Corporation writing proprietary language compilers. These were written in C, and my software was so well documented that the users (who were not C programmers) referred to my source code as a reference. I was told by the head of the tech writing department that my written user manual that it was the best work he'd ever seen out of an engineer.

I also worked on a few hardware projects, including a bubble memory system based on the Intel 8051, as well as wire-wrapping my own S100-based EPROM programmer for our CP/M systems.

I then went back to school to work at the Campus Bus Service main office, and in 1984 helped specify, install, and design a transit management system on our Zilog UNIX system. I was introduced to the Unify SQL database management system, and my software was used to schedule all the routes.

Back to Southern California

In 1984 I visited a friend from school (David Droman) on a consulting project in Orange County, and in the process used what were the first AT&T 3B2 and 3B5 systems in Southern California. My stay was only a week or so, but it formed the germ of an idea.

The next year, David called me: "Come to California, let's start a business". I left college early, packed everything I owned into my car, and drove across the country: I arrived in California on August 31, 1985. V-Systems was born. For several years we did custom software development and hardware sales, and we had an excellent relationship with the local AT&T branch. It took very little time before we were the best 3B2 shop in the county.

In 1988, our company dove into computer facsimile systems, and VSI-FAX was the fruits of our labors. This is one of the oldest commercial-grade UNIX facsimile systems on the market, with tens of thousands of installations worldwide. I built the first commercial release based on the excellent proof of concept created by my then-partner David, and ported the software to more than 30 UNIX platforms over the next 13 years, plus did the Windows NT port as well. I have a very long background in software portability.

In the early 1990s I left V-Systems to take the "regular" consulting customers on my own while the company focused on VSI-FAX. I did fax development for many years on a contract basis and expanded my other consulting as well.

Today

I work every day from my home office, using the phone, modems and the internet to communicate with my customers. I do leave the house now and then for onsite visits, but am happy that most of my work is done remotely.

I have a very well-equipped office: two DSL circuits, several ISDN lines, plenty of phone lines, and servers of many flavors. I have NT, Windows 2000, Linux and SCO UNIX systems available to me, plus all the software required by a diverse developer. I have an enormous library of technical reference materials.

I'm always on the lookout for new and interesting projects: please drop me a line to discuss yours.