OK, So I don't have a self portrait yet. Tight budget and other important stuff like car insurance and kid's braces take precedence over photo development.
Born January 9, 1961 in Springfield Illinois to Harold Wayne and Carol Jean Laswell. I have to admit it but I do have a sister Lisa Anne but we won't discuss her unusual ways here. Let's just say I think she inherited my Mom's family side of the joyful craziness. I believe she may of passed it on to my kids but time will tell whether or not I can influence them myself.
I like to say I was born in Illinois and raised in Michigan. I
spent what I feel were my formative years (7-14) in Mason MI just south
of the
capital Lansing. I had fun at school and Boy Scouts. It seems just
about the
time I was to get my First Class badge they changed the rules and I had
to
re-earn my Tenderfoot and Second class badges again. I never got past
Second
Class again because I was having too much fun camping and
canoeing in the great outdoors and helping the troop perform community
service.
In the Bicentennial year Dad got a job working for the USDA
and we moved the the Nation's capital. I felt it was cool to be near
the country's roots during it's 200th birthday.
Education:
High School: Glenelg High School. Graduated in the
top Fifth of the class
and excelled in Band, Choir and Math.
Vocational Tech School: I spent 2 summers and half
each day of my Senior
year at Howard Vo-Tech where I studied Data Processing. It all started
when I
was looking toward another boring summer. The summer school program
offered
to introduce me to keypunching which I felt could land me a good job.
This is where I was first introduced to RPG and Cobol.
Junior College: I started taking classes at Howard
Community College in
my Junior year in High School to persue my love of Computer
Programming. It was tough re-learning Cobol in a structured programming
fashion but in the end I believe it helped my career. At the end of my
senior High School year I was informed that I had been granted a
scholarship to HCC. One
semester project I took on was to write an 8085 emulator in
Fortran. I started it after revisiting my old faithful 8080 bug book I
purchased while I was in High School. Another project was a simple
calculus differential program. It recognized algebra expressions and
expanded them into differentials and attempted to reduce the
expressions to something more
manageable. I based it on my first 2 semesters of Calculus. I was a
little
intimidated by the teacher in my first day of full time college when he
stated
that the pre-requisites for the course was his pre-calc course at the
college. I listened to his description of the course and finally felt
that the pre-testing during admission had placed me in the Calculus
course correctly. I graduated HCC with an AA in Computer Science. I
wanted to take the Data Processing course because it didn't require the
2 semesters of Accounting and other courses not directly related to
programming but my counselors said it wouldn't transfer fully to a
4-Year college like the Computer Science degree would.
4-Year College: University of Maryland
Baltimore Campus was closest to home and had a good Information Systems
program. I was influenced at
Vo-Tech to persue a Data Processing degree instead of Computer Science
because "DP majors earn more money." My love was Computer Science
because of programming so every elective I was allowed I took a CompSci
course. In the end I graduated with a BS in Information Systems with a
certificate in Operations Research. Operations Research was a byproduct
since it
was only 2 more courses over my already full math regime.
Carreer:
Howard County Library: I started
working as a Page putting books back on the shelves soon after I
recieved my driver's license. A library was perfect for one like me who
loved to read.
Montgomery General Hospital: Started in
79 after graduating High School. I worked in House Keeping cleaning
floors, offices, Operating Rooms and beds. This job paid for my books
at HCC and my first semester at UMBC. I kept a position at MGH working
weekends till after I was married in 83.
Social Security Administration: I
landed this job while attending UMBC which I started in 1981. My
official title was "Peripheral Equipment Operator"
but it was the ultimate paper pusher job. I literaly took stacks of
paper
from the rows of printers and delivered (pushed) them to other areas in
the building. Towards the end of my career at SSA I got to work in the
bursting room. It was a room surrounded with sound deadening tiles and
held
decolators and bursting machines. The 6 part decolater could separate
up
to 6
parts of paper at a time. When it jammed you had to stop it quick or
your job
would take twice as long to complete. The bursting machines separated
forms and when things worked right you could keep 2 running at a time.
This was where I got my most experience with different types of
computer equipment:
Offline and online Printers, Tape Drives, Bursting Equipment and disk
drives. The second half of my career at SSA was spent in the New
Computer Center. This building was built around computers. It had a
room full of
batteries on the bottom floor for the UPS. Above that there was 1 floor
for consoles
and printers, 1 floor for tape drives, 1 floor for CPU's and disk
drives
and 1 floor for computer programmers. Working the midnight to 8:00
shift I could work a full work week and attend college during the day.
It made
those 12 noon classes tough but I made it. Working that shift I was
able to
get a couple special commendations because I would work during snow
storms
when the building was officially closed.
Hasson, Wilkerson and Associates: Tom
Hasson consulted for the firm my mom worked for. She was able to get me
a job interview which started me as a Computer Programmer of IBM's
midrange series.
I first got re-aquainted with RPG on H&W's small IBM System 34
then was moved to Greenspring Dairy where I converted programs to run
on Greenspring's System 38.
While at Greenspring Dairy I became re-aquainted with my keypunch
background
and learned little programming tricks in helping data entry clerks do
their
jobs quicker and more accurately. I also refined my understanding of
tape
drives and tape file formats. One project I was proud of was to take a
disk to tape dump from a DEC system and recover the data to be read by
the System 38.
Filterite/Memtec America Corp/US Filter/Vivendi: While
at H&W I started getting calls from
the dreaded head hunters. I refused their offers until I got at least a
year and half under my belt. My first interview was with Filterite who
offered to double my original salary which I jumped at and never looked
back.
My first project was to rewrite the order entry application. After
spending a week or two in the Customer Service department I began to
roll code for the System 38. I was the first in the MIS department to
get a PC XT and was soon helping accountants with their spreadsheets
and writing simple basic programs to help other areas of production.
Filterite, a part of Brunswick's Technetic division was sold to Memtec
after Brunswick decided they wanted to focus on their recreation
divisions. The change of hands promised some new blood in managment
and fresh cash to fuel the business. Mike Glynn soon became the
president
and pushed the company on to new Research and Development which has
helped
Memtec America grow ever since. As PC's became more prevalent through
out the
corporation I was called on more and more to help users in other
departments
with their computers. A network was introduced and soon spread
throughout
the growing number of buildings in Timonium. About that time we
converted
to an IBM AS/400. After a couple conversion projects from MAPICS to
BPCS my job functions began to turn from strictly "mainframe"
programming to PC regulation and maintenance. Now besides experience in
AS/400 programming, Security and administration I have aquired
experience in working with Windows NT Servers and TCP/IP Networks and
routers. When Memtec started beating US Filter at the bidding table US
Filter decided to aquire Memtec. They really
wanted the Memcor side of the business for their Water Technology
group. The
Filterite side I stayed with was just extra cash generating assets.
About a year later Vivendi from France bought US Filter to get the US
business. Since then I have learned a lot more about working inside
very large
multi-site corporations and having to deal with connecting LANs to
larger WANs.
As technology has evolved I have become more and more
involved with our Lotus notes installation. I have grown into the Notes
Administration
side of things and have even been able to take some Notes
Administration and
programming courses. I have kept up with things by being able to attend
the occasional LotusSphere convention.
Another technology I have grown into is Web site
administration. Because of the TCP/IP background I get to handle
internal DNS servers and converse with ISP's who host external DNS
names for us. I have become familiar with firewall, authentication and
VPN technologies also as they are thrust
upon me. I have even supported the hosting of web sites and a little
web programming.
Pall Corp:In November 01 Vivendi
announced that they were going to carry thru with their plans to sell
off the non-environmental elements it got when buying US Filter. That
included Filterite who doesn't neccesarily restrict itself to water
purification. We used to consider PALL a competitor but
they didn't think so. After the dust settled they closed all the sales
offices and some were offerred jobs with PALL distributors. Filterite
has all but disappeared but the hard workers are still in the trenches
trying to improve the bottom line. Things are different with Pall.
Responsibilities are more centralized so my Notes Administration and
network know how is dwindling. I'm learning more about Cisco products
but being centrally managed I'm just an extra set of eyes and fingers.
I was able to put together some older routers and upgrade our local WAN
links to all Cisco products so if I need help from Corporate they don't
have to work with old Motorola equipment.
Another era began with MAPICS. Yes again. By 2004 we were told that we
had to come into the Corporate Standard of using MAPICS and it would be
centralized inan offsite system. We began the conversion back to MAPICS
while we were also trying to use up our USF vacation. My boss
couldn't/wouldn't use his vacation and decided to retire after the
conversion before he lost his vacation time. He retired just before
Sarbanes and Oxley (SOX) really messed things up. Mind you, we ran
a pretty tight IT shop but SOX was a programmer's worst nightmare. The
PC side of the SOX audit was easy, a hassle, but we made it through.
Yes the PC guys had to deal with SOX because accountants used the
servers so the servers were accessed and protected had to be audited
for SOX compliance. The nice thing about being managed by
a corporate office is they then have the responsibility for things they
manage. The extra procedures developed were no hassle and essentially
gave more structure to our responsiblities. The AS/400 side of the shop
fared worse. We aren't just programmers. When you run a shop of 4
people or less everyone is operations. In a traditional sense of
business Programmers/Developers should not have access to the Live side
of the business. They get to play in the sandbox all day. But Computer
Operations do have access to the live side of the business. They help
run the business. That is where we got hurt the most. Now our
operations job got a lot harder because we have to go into the closet,
change hats then come back out as operators. Once we finish we are back
into the Programmer role. We also have to document everything we do and
get every piece of paper signed then filed away for the auditors.
Programmers write code, documentation is useless code that never gets
executed.
Hobbies:
Photography: I purchased a Minolta 35mm SLR and have always loved
to take pictures when time and money permits. I still have the SLR but
it hasn't work reliably since I dropped it a dozen feet or so. Now I own
a Sony DSC S50 and hope to be putting more pictures on the website as
time and space permit.
Model Railroad: I started playing with N-Scale model trains and
always dreamed of a large layout but never got that far.
Computers: I purchased my first computer, a TI
99/4a Home computer late in my college career. I promised myself after
getting my 4 year degree I would never go back to college until I had a
word processor. My TI served me well during my 2 post-graduate courses
on networks. It got me into online services and computer games. In 1992
I was able to purchase a PC compatible. It was a 386 clone that I
purchased for just over $2000. Later it was upgraded to a 486/DX4-100
with a 3D PCI video card. It acutally ran MS Flight Simulator
reasonably. In an effort to squeeze another frame per second I tried a
BIOS upgrade. It failed and I had to purchase a Pentium 166/MMX
motherboard and processor. This has served me quite well. The kids
games encourage me to upgrade a component almost every year. It
currently has a 40x CD-ROM, 40Gb hard drive and 128Mb of memory. To
feed my growing Linux fascination I purchased a $100 used Compaq
Prolinea and have upgraded it with a hard drive and a CD-RW for backup.
In the ever quest for speed I purchased the components to put together
a 3rd computer for the house. It was a 1.2Ghz Athalon
Thunderbird with 256Mb of memory. Next as my network of computers began
to grow the old P166 was too slow for the kids so I upgraded my Athalon
to an XP2700 with 1Gb of memory and gave the 1.2Ghz system to the kids.
My mother-in-law couldn't stand her 800Mhz Celeron so it was reformated
and became the son's computer while the daughter took the thunderbird.
A year later the son needed more to support for his growing fascination
with PC games so we put together an XP2800 for him. I'm going to need
another hub for the network soon.
Flight Simulator: As soon as I got my 1.2Ghz
computer together I started looking for MS Flight Simulator 2000 but it
had pulled off the shelves because of 9/11/01 concerns and the pending
release of FS2002. When I finally found a site I could pre-order FS2002
it was mine. I have since joined a Virtual Airline. See the menu bar
for more info on that hobby of mine. The XP2700 had all the memory and
fast video card to handle FS2002. After a hard disk crash late in 2004
I decided it was time to upgrade to FS2004. The hardware could still
handle it.
Genealogy: After I got my computer I was always
looking for something
to organize with it. I became interested in tracing my family after
attending a couple family reunions. Since then I have been given a copy
of PAF (Personal Ancestral File) and some pretty heavy research by a
couple uncles. I hope to one day improve my father in law's simple
family list to the same level of my uncle's professional looking
research. I'm getting more aquainted with all the resources available
on the web and have added a few ancestors every year. The latest tool
is a Palm Pilot
running GEDPALM to take my database with me where ever I visit
(cemetaries, libraries and Genealogy Society meetings). Hopefully with
the resurrection of my family website I can post some simple trees
here.
Last updated 7/22/02