I was born at an early age in the small town of Bay City, Michigan in 1948 to two parents who remained together from 1944, when they married, until 2001, when my mother died. After a short career as a student in elementary and high schools, finding college an unsatisfactory experience, I joined the Air Force in 1969, whereupon they sent me to school to learn Chinese.

After getting out of the service, I went back to college on the G.I. bill and discovered computers, which were then just becoming popular in the business world, so I learned how to work the darn things and soon became embroiled in a career programming the things, and then, later, supervising programming groups, and after that, heading up an operating systems design group. It was a lot of fun, but the company died. I wrote some books on the subject of programming for Unix, which at that time I was somewhat of an expert, and even taught some courses in the subject at an IBM Ed center.

I live alone with my cat, still in Michigan, but over the years I've also spent some time living in California, Texas, Virginia, and even spent a summer working in Munich Germany, which was a very enlightening experience. Other travels include Cairo, Egypt, where I visited the Pyramids, Chichen Itza in the Yucatan, and Cancun for a short but stressful vacation.

I speak English, German, and Chinese, but the German is rusty and the Chinese is almost forgotten after more than 30 years of neglect. Currently I enjoy flying virtual airplanes in flight sims and catching up on the many movies and TV shows I missed while slaving in computer rooms. And I spend a great deal of time talking to my friends on IRC, who are very important to me.

Best of luck to you all.

JohnGuru