And that’s a wrap!

It was fun (sometimes) and it was work (sometimes) and it was play (sometimes) but the absolute best part is… it’s over!


I remember (vaguely) back in highschool, 1979, taking Computer Math as an elective. I lasted two days in class, read the entire BASIC book in a week, and was promoted to just going to the lab instead of class. I was coding a space war game on a Commodore PET – I think I may still have the paper tape it is stored on. From that fall on I knew I would be able to actually have a job/career doing something I enjoyed. Very exciting time!

My first year of college I was already working part time for a local consulting firm doing some fortran coding. I was introduced to CP/M, and dBaseII, and WordStar, and other amazing things, and pretty much learned more working there for a year than I would in three years in the CS program at UMD.

Went on to get a Masters in CS, and a Software Engineering specialization at George Mason – there I did learn quite a bit, sadly mostly unused in real life. Software engineering isn’t / wasn’t done much in the real world, but the skills did translate. I was able to work in R&D for about 25 years – an excellent if not lucrative area. In the late 90s through early 2000s it became important to pivot to private sector work because tech is definitely tricky to age in (ie, over 40, over 50, over 60) , so I started the transition to what ended up the end game – engineering management, in the SRE/Production Engineering side of things.

It was very energizing managing early career engineers, and working in the cutting edge spaces at Microsoft and later Facebook/Meta. Most of what I knew translated into the latest languages, OSes, buzz words, etc.

Now that I’m out (actually nearly two year ago now) I’m really enjoying doing what I want (within reason!) when I want (within reason.)