I was a graduate student at UC Berkeley from 1978 to 1981. That was a very special time to be there, because the Berkeley Software Distibutions (BSD) were happening all around me, and I got to be part of that effort. While Bill Joy was the primary author of vi and termcap, I took over support in 1979 and added several enhancements, including macros and support for function keys. I also wrote tools such as uuencode/uudecode, script, w, and two that are no longer used: leave (a command line alarm reminder program), and fed (the Berkeley Font Editor, used to clean up the Hershey fonts we had in 1980).
My Ph.D. dissertation showed how to build a text editor for formatted files (programs, HTML files, etc.) and give the user the illusion they are editing text, when they are really editing the tree structure. This allowed the program to watch what you were doing, and point out any errors while you were still in the editor. This technology has been used in tools like Microsoft Visual Studio. Berkeley was a great place to work, and I will always treasure the time I worked there with my colleagues.
In 1981 I graduated and went to work for Bell Labs in Columbus, Ohio. In addition to various projects I was assigned to, I brought up and ran cbosgd, a key UNIX system on the UUCP network. I also assisted AT&T and Berkeley in finding the best features of 4BSD UNIX and System V, to help form the merged System V Release 4 (which became Solaris) and to spin off clean open sourced tools for a freely distributable BSD system.
While at Bell Labs I founded the Gateway group of Email, Usenet, and eventually Internet gateways for AT&T. Later I designed an email system called Electronic Messaging system (EMS) that used our POST White Pages directory to deliver email to one or more people whose names matched a database query.
When Avaya spun off from Lucent in 2000, I went with Avaya to manage their Avaya Corporate Email and Directory (ACED) group. We spun off 30,000 users from Lucent onto Microsoft Exchange servers, supporting both Outlook (for business users) and the Netscape IMAP client (for technical users.) My year as a Technical Manager was challenging but rewarding. Bell Labs/AT&T/Lucent/Avaya was a great place to work, and I will always treasure the time I worked there with my colleagues.
After the tech bubble burst and Avaya downsized, I moved to Bank One, a large Columbus area bank. Our team built new UNIX and Windows servers for projects as required. When Chase bought Bank One, our team became the primary engineering and operations group for Chase. Chase was a great place to work, and I will always treasure the time I worked there with my colleagues.
In 2007 I had the opportunity to move back home to San Diego, working for San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E). My EMS Operations team engineered and operated the Energy Management Team (EMS) used by transmission operators to run the SDG&E power grid. My technical leadership roles included design of new releases of the EMS, leading their implementation, and building tools and processes for 24/7 operational monitoring of the EMS. I also served as the lead Subject Matter Expert (SME) for compliance with the NERC CIP government regulations of our high impact EMS assets. SDG&E was a great place to work, and I will always treasure the time I worked there with my colleagues.
In 2018 I retired from SDG&E. I look forward to enjoying my home in Poway, doing a little consulting, and working on my memoir.