I'm a refugee from a thirty-year programming career that started in an astronomy department, included several years in seismic data processing (ultrasounds on the belly of the earth using dynamite by people violently seeking petroleum), and ended up with a couple of systems houses back when we multiplexed RS-232 lines (!), emulated Hercules Graphics Cards, and created "Wide-Area Networks" through dial-up modems. After all that, I went back as an aged undergraduate, finished my BA in English 25 years to the day I started it (summa cum mora: with greatest delay), then got into graduate school to earn a masters in creative writing, and these days I spend most of my time writing either creatively or commercially.

Although I was never an Apple acolyte or big on Bill-bashing (I had made a good living by programming PCs, after all, and MS products actually worked in their own quirky way back in Bill's tenure), The Windows 8.1 Virus (no one should dare call it an OS) was such a negative experience for me that I recrently exorcised everything Microsoft from my life. My big machines now run Ubuntu 14.01, and the little machines run Android. In lieu of MS Office I use Google Docs, which are sufficient for most purposes, and I can make do with LibreOffice if I need broader functionality. I don't even run Skype anymore because I hear Microsoft bought it, which probably explains all of the bugs in there: ICQ is a step up in reliability and performance. Once a great software house, Microsoft now is the new IBM: so big that they can live forever as a societal parasite by offering nothing more than a set of life-degrading tools. And yes, Virginia, there is life after Microsoft, and it's good. In fact I feel like someone who was once a Borg but whose humanity has been restored.

Other than making computers sing, I teach English as a Foreign Language around the world (that MFA is a surfboard that let me catch a global wave), do some freelance writing for hire, play WoW, watch Game of Thrones, read, and write.