I was born in 1950 in the 5 points area of Cleveland Ohio. I grew up and attended schools in that area, until we moved to Willoughby Hills when I was in the 6th grade. I graduated from Willoughby South High School in 1968, where I was on the Swimming and Chess teams.
I worked as a store clerk, farm hand, machinist, truck driver and newspaper printer, until I was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1970. After serving for 2 years as a driver for the 172nd Infantry Brigade Commander, I returned back to the print shop for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
In 1973 I decided to take a chance to become a computer programmer and attended the Institute of Computer Management. It was a 1-year course, and after I graduated, I became a computer operator at Pick-n-Pay, and Glidden-Durkee.
I eventually became a Systems Programmer and moved to Corpus Christi, TX working for H.E.B groceries, and then, on to Wichita Falls, TX working for Whites Home and Auto.
This is also around the time I bought my first personal computer, the TRS-80 from Radio Shack.
I started my own business called Micro-Computer Aid, but after a few years went back to working for larger companies. It was still too new for most businesses to understand why I was needed.
From there I went on to work for Certain-Teed in Wichita Falls, and Baxter Health Care working on a contract with the Sheppard Air Force Base.
During that timeframe I always had 1-3 personal computers in my house. That knowledge came in handy when I moved to Baltimore MD to work at Citicorp’s Hunt Valley Command Center. I was one of the first programmers in the country dedicated to automating the work that their computer operators were doing.
I used my PC skills to create automated workstations to alleviate some of the redundant and manual work the operators were performing. While working for them, I had a 2-year stint in London implementing some of the same automated processes I created in Hunt Valley.
When Citicorp created a massive Command Center with a 36-screen video wall in Las Vegas, I was the first one there to help design and set it up.
After retiring from them in 2012, I started to work for a multi-million-dollar Las Vegas business, where I handled and automated their IT, Bookkeeping, State Compliance Reporting and Software Apps, using the AI experience gained through the many years.
Last year I decided to write a book about this journey in order to show how AI (not Artificial Intelligence) has evolved through my lifetime.