Howdy!

This is where you can find out a little more about me, my music, my church, and some of my immediate family.

The Early Career Years

Although I started out in the Roman Church, I became a staunch Presbyterian after a long journey with many detours along the way. The first of those detours happened in my early teens, just after having been confirmed at Immaculate Conception RC Church in Toronto. Having grown up in a home where my mom only went to church as a duty didn't really bode well for my tenure in any congregation. With nothing there for me, and no real sense of belonging, it was easy to drift away and find something else, not church related, to do with my Sundays. Meanwhile, I was going to school, with reasonable success, although without any real sense of direction.

David goes after Goliath

The early eighties were a time of great change in the computer industry. Mainframe systems, those huge room filling machines that were the state of art in the 60s and 70s were rapidly being challenged by those pesky little personal computers, PCs, that were coming out of every lab going. When IBM came on board with their own version of a PC, everything suddenly changed even more quickly. With a readily accepted industry standard, excellent marketing, and a policy that invited others to build both compatible machines and hardware, IBM made it possible for the PC to become the new industry standard. Companies that couldn't compete soon disappeared, or were transformed beyond recognition. My employer, Sperry Univac, once the industry leader, was one of those dinosaurs that couldn't adapt quick enough. By 1984 they were downsizing, and I lost my job. By 1990, they had completely disappeared from the map, having been absorbed by, I believe, Burroghs.