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Biography
of Sorts
I was born in
Brooklyn, New York in 1952.
Although my family was at most traditional, by a strange twist of fate -- in the form of a beloved Yiddish-speaking grandmother who couldn't understand the telephone operator -- I spent eight long years at an ultra-orthodox Jewish day school, where, as the only child of native English-speaking 'Yankees' (I use the term loosely!) in the entire class, I was basically a misfit.
I then attended Yeshiva University High School in upper Manhattan, which was, at least from a social standpoint, a somewhat more enjoyable experience.
After completing a BA in math and economics at Queens College, I studied for an M.S. in operations research at Berkeley. In 1982, when I was 30, I moved with my family to Israel
In Israel, I decided to go back to school
to obtain an MBA
from Hebrew
University.
Like most other new immigrants, I was
conscripted into the Israel
Defense Forces, where, at the age of 35, I survived a month-long 'basic training for old people.' Ever since, the teenage conscripts with whom I have done yearly reserve-duty training exercises have found it endlessly amusing whenever I have tried to assume the "you're under attack - throw yourself to the ground and prepare to return fire" position. (Luckily for me, upon becoming a 'semi-old-man' when I hit 45, I was 'semi-retired' from reserve duty.)
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Professional Matters
While living in New York, I worked as an operations research analyst and programmer, first for American Airlines, and then, after AA flew the coop and moved its headquarters to Dallas, for International Paper. Upon moving to Israel, I discovered that there was little in the way of business-related operations research done here. I took a position as a mathematician and systems analyst for a leading Israeli defense contractor, working mainly on a major computer-simulation project. After this project was completed, however, I felt that it was time to move on.
At the time, however, during the mid-eighties, the Israeli software industry was in its infancy, and one basically had a choice of developing payroll applications in COBOL or doing real-time programming for the defense establishment. And so I decided, along with half the country it seemed, to get an MBA. Naturally, in my absence, the software industry took off, while the economy as a whole went into deep recession. I held a series of jobs doing business writing in one form or another, and finally found myself in the proverbial 'job from hell' as a coordinator and writer of business proposals for Aurec (AMDOCS), a leading developer of telephony software.
Finding myself dealing with software developers who were half my age and making twice as much money, I came to the sad realization that I was definitely barking up the wrong tree professionally, and decided to get back into software development. After doing a refresher course to learn about the joys of object-oriented design, I began to work as a programmer myself. I am presently employed as a mathematician for an electro-optics startup.
My Family 
Interesting Links
I assume that you aren't interested in a laundry list of every site I've ever visited, so let me just note the following:
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