Greetings from Georgia. (The state)

I started my interest in electronics at age 11 when my Dad handed me a cat whisker with galena ,  a variable condenser (that's what we called capacitors in those days), a used field coil (for the wire in it) and an oatmeal box.  Also was included a hand written instruction manual.  So I built a crystal radio set.  I then went on to build a number of other projects over the years.  Two years later I took the test and became amateur radio operator.  Two more years and I took another set of tests and  was awarded a First Class Radio Telephone FCC license.  In highschool i built a bunch of Heathkits.

I started attending the University until Uncle Sam decided he need me more than the school did.  I was not making satisfactory progress according to Uncle.  I was in good company since about 85% of the engineering students weren't either.  I think the measuring stick was flawed.  I eventually got back in school and earned a BSEE degree and went to work for Control Data Corporation as a field engineer.  Back in my junior year I took a programming course (FORTRAN) and I was hooked.  I finally found what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.  I continued taking programming courses as often as I could.  

It didn't take me long to discover that the hardware end of the computer business had no use for programmers.  There are two camps, hardware people and software people.  Many of not most of the hardware people (in the field) did not have 4 year degrees and a majority were ex-military men.  

I transitioned as soon as I could to the software support side of the business and never looked back.  I left CDC to work for Babcock and Wilcox, who as a CDC customer with a couple of large computers.  14 years later I was recruited by Cray Research to work as a on site software support "analyst" in Cinci.  I was still working for Cray when SGI bought us around 1995 I guess.  I retired in 2005.

I had started to design my own computer while I was still in college, 'cause I wanted one of my very own.  I never got it built because I picked up a copy of the January 1976 issue.  I think it was issue 4 or some such.  Anyway there is where I learned about the new crop of "personal" computers.  I immediately subscribed and shortly found the KIM-1 computer being offered for the paltry sum of $245 (IIRC).  I bought it and had my own computer finally!  When the IBM PC clones came along I got one of them. 

One of my Cray customers was Florida State University, and on a visit to Tallahassee a professor I knew mentioned he had installed an OS named Minix.  I showed an interest and he handed me box of 3.5 " floppies.  I never actually got to install it.  I found the usenet user group for minux and started browsing it.  This was, I think 1991.  Someone had posted a blurb about a college kid from Finland that was writing a kernel.  I immediately started following that usenet group (linux) and discovered how to build and install a linux kernel and the GNU software.  That was the end of my interest in Minix.

I installed Linux kernel 0.12 and haven't looked back.  My last Windows system was running Win 98.

Since them I have done a lot with many Arduino boards and clones, including the Expressif and Teensy boards.  So my degree didn't go to waste, it contributed to my hobby, but if truth were told, I had a lot of electronic experience before I even went to college.

Respectively submitted,

Jim