1969 | Disassembled for the first time a mechanical clock. It never worked the same. |
1970 | Took apart my first electric clock. It never worked the same... neither did I. (I didn't think to unplug it!) |
1976 | Drew 'plans' for an electric coffee pot that had an alarm clock connected and would begin percolating at a predetermined time. Three years later, Mr. Coffee with a timer was on the market. |
1977 | Began tinkering with electronics projects from a book called Electronics for Boys and Girls and built a homemade electronic 'organ' that sounded really bad. But, I learned a lot by gathering all the parts from discarded televisions and radios. |
1978 | Began my interest in computers by learning the binary, octal, and hexadecimal numbering systems in addition to reading punchcards by sight. That year, by my request, my mother tried to get me enrolled in a computer course at Arizona State University, but being only 12 at the time, no one would even talk to us about the possibility. |
1981 | Two significant things happened in my life: I began programming in BASIC on a Commodore 64 in a K-Mart electronics department on the weekends and I dropped out of the 9th grade. I had been enrolled in 11 public schools by that time (MI: 6, AZ: 4, AL: 1) and none of them had anything but intellectual restrictions to offer me. So, rather than trying to "balance" my time between all of the core curricula, I began to pursue only those things that interested me at that time: guitar, electronics, and computers. |
1983 | In the autumn, approximately eight months before my classmates were to graduate, I took the GED exams and scored very well. A few weeks later, I talked to the head of the Electronics department at Calhoun Community College about credit by examination. He refused to consider the idea so I enrolled as a Music Education major where I remained on the President's List for 3 quarters. After which, while attempting to give guitar lessons to a friend, I realized I didn't have the patience to teach music. |
1985 | A friend bestowed on me a Radio Shack Color Computer that he had upgraded to 64KB (that's 0.064 MegaBytes) RAM and a 160KB floppy disk drive. I used the CoCo to advance my knowledge of the BASIC Language and also learned 680x Assembly Language. |
1986 | While installing C-Band satellite dishes and receivers for something like slave-wages, a client urged me to pursue a degree in electronics and I applied for and won the first VanDyke Electronics Scholarship at Northwest Shoals Community College (then Muscle Shoals State Technical College). |
1987 | Pieced together a 10MHz 8086 XT class IBM clone with a monochrome video adapter (connected to my television), 256KB RAM, and a whopping 10MB hard drive. I also designed and constructed a digital voice recorder that utilized a memory management technique that would come to be known as 'expanded memory'. |
1988 | Despite a temporary expulsion (the result of a battle of sarcasm with an instructor who answered all his students' questions with, "It's in your text."), I graduated with honors and an Associate's degree in Applied Electronics. |
1991 | Substitute taught lasers, fiber optics, and computer literacy at Northwest Shoals Community College |
1992 | Started a computer company called ReliaTech - convinced that people would soon tire of the 1.4MB limitation of current floppy diskette technology, I purchased a revolutionary product known as the 'Floptical' drive which achieved an amazing 20MB on a special 3.5 in. diskette by combining magetic and optical technologies. (To my knowledge, the demonstration unit I purchased is still sitting in the box in a storage building at a former employer's office.) |
1993 | Purchased Micro$oft's Visual C++ 1.2 and Visual Basic 1.0 and have used almost every version of those since. |
Substitute taught electronics at Allen Thornton Trade School | |
1995 | Contrary to the warnings of the naysayers, I assembled the first Intel-based (dual PentiumŪ) server system with a storage capacity of 54GB (6x9GB RAID Level 5 array) and installed it at the Montgomery County Tax Assessor's Office in Montgomery, Alabama. |
1996 | Engineered and supervised the installation of the first 100Mbit full-duplex fiber-optic local area network in the state of Alabama for Montgomery County between the Tax Appraiser's GIS server and the county's E-911 office. |
1997 | Performed an analysis and wrote an expose for Puerto Rico's Oficina de Gerencia y Presupuesto (Office of Management and Budget) detailing how they had paid for a document management system pilot project and after one million dollars and one full year, it was not even remotely functional. |
Engineered a system for the Comptroller's Office of the State of Tennessee whereby each County's Property Appraisal department could integrate their Intel-based PC systems with the State's IBM Mainframe in real time. | |
1998 | Decided time was more valuable than money and took three months to get re-aquainted with my family. In the Fall, I started working as a VB/SQL Server contractor at 30 hours per week ($35/hr.) for a Little Rock Software development company. |
2000 | My wife and I decided that what we always wanted (to live in every part of the world) was gradually slipping through our fingers. So, to make my skills more attractive to those who would be willing to transport us, I combined my fascination with language with my desire to teach and to help others and I began taking steps toward obtaining a degree in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). |