I work at home doing contract programming and day trading. I have some shareware Bots that I have written for the ActiveWorlds 3-d environment.

I have my own company for contract and specialized work (Prototech, Inc.). Contact me for C++ programming projects, 3-d modelling and world creation, and creation of automated Bots.

My interest in computers began in 8th grade, when we had Teletype-33 terminals hooked up to an HP-2000 "time-shared" system via either a 110 baud, or a "fast" 300 baud acoustic modem. Our school system bought the new state-of-the-art HP-2000F system. No one knew how to run it, so ... Well, I was in 8th grade, so I already knew everything (you know how teenagers are), so I became the sysop/sysadmin/q&a/mentor/techsupport dood. They actually let me run it until I graduated from high school. Hacker's dream come true, for sure.

Back in this "golden" era of hacking, we pretty much hacked things to learn them (well, maybe a harmless prank here and there <g>). Since then, I have always been interested in how things REALLY worked. Hence the interest in systems level stuff, particularly networking.

Most-proud-of-hack: I developed a 4K ROM for the HP-41c calculator (remember them? - plug in ROM/RAM packs) in undocumented HP-41 microcode (assembly language, but entered in hexadecimal). This ROM took input from four toe switches in your boots, and had four LEDs for output that were wired via small fiber-optic strands to the band of a wristwatch. Viewed at just the right angle, you could see them (but no one else could). Being a long time blackjack player and card counter, I packed this ROM with a program to accept card inputs, and determine playing strategies, and betting strategies. For you card counters, it used 16 simultaneous counting systems (3 of which I designed for specific plays), as well as counting each card value and total cards. Via the toe switches, you could tell it to start a new deck, change the casino rules (e.g., hit soft-17), etc. You could also interrogate it for information about which cards were left (for end-play). I (and a team of several others) built several of these blackjack machines, and took them to Las Vegas for play. This was about a month before blackjack "computers" were made illegal - we can't take credit, because we didn't get caught. We did ... "OK." ;-)