I grew up in Louisville, KY, and received a Masters Degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Louisville in 1978. After graduation, I worked as an engineer for several years, but shifted to doing computer-related work when personal computers became popular in the early 1980's. As part of my job, I authored or co-authored a number of internal company reports as well as many papers presented at conferences. Apart from my job, I wrote almost 40 articles for computer magazines and was a regular columnist for a computer journal for two years. Additionally, I wrote over a dozen philosoph...