I attended several elementary schools in town, notably Franklin and Vance Chapman. High school was all Lakeview. My primary interests were wrestling (one of the few sports available where smaller than average sized people have no handicap), and Air Cadets (got my pilot's licence, and gliding too). A strong aversion to smoke kept me out of the social scene, but I got along well with everybody and had a good time.
I went to the University of Waterloo to take mathematics, since that's how the coin fell; engineering was on the other side. I started in actuarial science, not even knowing what it was, because of a registration mix up (by me), but soon ended up in computer science, where I stuck. I worked co-op at UW, and when it came time to graduate, I let everybody there convince me to go for a masters degree. I think it was mostly a waste of time, but I got to take the trains course (you play with a model train set, like in kindergarten, but with computers), and I got to play lots of Hack. So it wasn't a total waste.
After all that school I worked as a programmer at UW for a few years, until the group I was part of spun off to create a company called Thinkage. Actually, it was more like spun out: UW didn't want us since we were generating too much income!
After over a decade at Thinkage I got downsized. It was during the dot-com bust, but not really caused by it. Nonetheless, I went unemployed for a few years. Fortunately, I had lots of money from working at Thinkage. It might have helped if I had been willing to move to Toronto, but I hate driving in traffic.
I went to Lakehead University for a year a got a teaching certificate. It was fun, especially working with the wrestling team. After graduating, I only got one job interview when I went looking for a teaching position. Once again, no Toronto. I quickly got another programming job working for Systems Logic in Brantford, which brings us to now.
You may have noticed a lack of commentary on my social life, above. That's because there isn't any. My brother calls me a hermit, and that's a pretty good description. I sit in my hovel waiting to point knights errant off to the hot babes (well, to their web sites). One's bound to come by some day. Mostly, I play adventure games, read, obsess over trans-neptunian objects, watch too many movies, work on little programming projects, and do a little juggling.
And now *sob* my parents are moving from Thunder Bay and I may never get back there again. Any old pals whose product of boredom and curiosity exceeds their good sense can e-mail me via datanguayh AT sentex DOT ca
|
|
|
|
|
|
