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About My Work

Elementary School Years

As a young boy I was industrious and enjoyed working and accomplishing tasks. The earliest task given to me that I recall was to paint the inside of our garage in our home in NY. I also remember cultivating the ground of our vegetable and fruit plants and raking the leaves in our yard and shovelling the snow. In these latter years, my father paid me $1 per hour, and I recall vividly one night when my dad came home and asked me (or re-asked me) how many hours I had worked over the past few weeks. I mentioned 31 hours, and I was totally amazed when he then handed me a flat stack of precisely 31 brand new one-dollar bills. I was thrilled and I proceeded to judiciously spend some of it at a toy store that my father took me to.

Middle School Years

Having moved to Florida just prior to starting middle school, I became interested in collecting coins, just as a neighborhood kid was doing. However, each rare coin cost some money--maybe 20 cents to 90 cents for a special penny or nickel. To get these rare coins in great condition (e.g. "uncirculated" condition) would cost more money.

My first job was to deliver newspapers to houses, duplexes, and condominums in the neighborhood. I did my job with a passion and even won an award for my efforts and high percentage of customers that would pay for the delivery service of the free newspapers. I had an intricate system on posterboard where I knew each customer and who I had tried to visit before and who accepted or denied paying for the service (which was optional). The regional director (an adult) gathered other kid workers in the region over to my home for a meeting and presented me with an award and had me demonstrate my methods as a possible model for the other kids.

My second job was to mow the lawn for a particular home, which had a steep decline into the canal along one side of their property. The prior kid (and friend) who mowed the lawn for them had almost lost his lawn mower in the canal so he quit cutting the lawn. Since I was a year older and had experience cutting my own yard, I offered my services to the family. They contracted me for $10 each time it needed to be cut, which would be once or twice a week, depending upon how quickly the grass was growing. Since they were quite pleased with the service, they rewarded me with $11 or $12, which made me feel real good. When the grass was extra high and the liked the service, they would pay me $13. This was awesome, and it enabled me to purchase quite a few nice coins. [My father never understood why I would pay $1 for a penny... didn't make sense to him, but it was fun for me and a shared interest with a neighborhood friend.]

High School Years

During my high school years, I concentrated on my school work and athletics. I worked hard to be a good athlete and to be a good student. Further, I worked hard to achieve in math competitions and computer programming competitions. One particular night in 12th grade, I got chinese fortune cookie that said, "Your hard work will soon pay off," and it did! In addition to achieving an "A" average in my classes and enjoying my athletic and social events, I attained top honors in math, computers, and science. As a senior in high school, I had placed first in the state in mathematics contests and in computer programming contests. I also worked hard on my science fair project(s) to program the computer to solve the Rubik's Cube and other mathematical puzzle. As a result, the Westinghouse Science Talent Search named me as one of the top 300 high school science students in the USA for my science fair project. Proceeding to the National Mu Alpha Theta convention, I had placed 3rd in the advanced mathematics test and placed 5th in the team computer programming contest as the team's captain. My math and computer programming accomplishments paved the way for me to be offered a scholarship and a wonderful job in college.

University Years - Florida Center for Instructional Computing (FCIC)

Dr. Andria Troutman, the director for the Florida Center for Instructional Computing (FCIC) at USF, had sponsored the computer contest in 1984 that my team had won.  As the captain, I was offered by Dr. Troutman a position working for her at her company and managed to get me even more scholarship money to matriculate at USF instead of Florida Atlantic University (where I was headed).  During the next 5 years, I had grown with the company and written many programs for instructional purposes, while at the same time attending classes at USF.  During the first two summers, I was given the task of creating a Database Management System that would be used by Highland County Schools.  Dr. Troutman asked me to choose one person to come on board to assist me with this immense project.  I could think of no one better than my friend Hong Wing Pun who was attending the University of Miami.  Each summer he came to Tampa to code and debug the multi-program Database Management System.  The system was sold for about a quarter of a million dollars.

By the age of 20, I had become a co-author of a college text book that taught teachers how to utilize computers in the classroom.  As the programmer, I received royalties for the IBM and Apple versions for several years.  I was thankful to Dr. Troutman for such an opportunity to partner with her and Dr. James White (and with Frank Bright on the Apple version).  The text was called: The Micro Goes to School.

NCNB - North Carolina National Bank