Hi! And thanks.

[David Lloyd-Jones]

Hi, Thumper -- and thanks for the many helpful things you've done over the years.

FYI, I'm a former Congressional staffer (wrote education legislation, particularly the thin edge of the wedge for the Federal Department of Education, for Pat Moynihan in the Nixon White House.)
I did a spell as Marvin Minsky's assistant at the MIT AI Lab, commuting on the Bird With the Yellow Tail from DC, and did some of the early wrangling on ARPAnet, where I was user #300. An uppity little bugger, I'd hitch-hiked down from Toronto to discuss the whole thing with Vannevar Bush in 1965.

Funny story for you: when the young are pestering the old and the great there will sometimes be a test to see if you get more than the obligatory nod. By hitch-hiking from Toronto to Lexington, I'd qualified for 15 minutes of the great man's time, and then he started to show me out, kindly walking me around his machine shop, and mentioning that he happened to be doing some free-lance work for the Canadian atomic power agency at the time. Here came the test: "You don't happen to know the atomic number of uranium do you?" By sheerest chance I'd been reading an article on deviant versions of Mendeleev's Table that morning, so I chirpily said "Yes, sir, it's XYZ point ABC," to three decimal places. I passed! He melted into friendly conversation, and gave me the rest of the afternoon until his wife came along around four and threw me out.

In 1972 I went to Japan, intending to just look around, but since they didn't have any coin laundries I fell in twelve years of building 400 of them all over the country, studying Japanese with a staffer in the National Diet, helping a nephew of the Emperor in business, and generally having a good time.

Since 1984 I've had a couple of business careers, two families, three daughters, two grand-daughters so far and currently I'm studying Chinese, angling for a way of getting a PhD or something at BeiDai -- which ain't gonna be easy.

It is said that the average billionaire has gone broke 2.4 times, so currently in genteel poverty I am 5/6ths of the way there.

Again, many thanks for the good work you do: you're a huge asset to the community, so it's a small pleasure to run across you here to be able to say Thank you!

And best wishes,
David Lloyd-Jones.

 

[ThumperTM]

Welcome to our family David Lloyd-Jones!

 

[hacxx]

Hi, Thumper -- and thanks for the many helpful things you've done over the years.

FYI, I'm a former Congressional staffer (wrote education legislation, particularly the thin edge of the wedge for the Federal Department of Education, for Pat Moynihan in the Nixon White House.)
I did a spell as Marvin Minsky's assistant at the MIT AI Lab, commuting on the Bird With the Yellow Tail from DC, and did some of the early wrangling on ARPAnet, where I was user #300. An uppity little bugger, I'd hitch-hiked down from Toronto to discuss the whole thing with Vannevar Bush in 1965.

Funny story for you: when the young are pestering the old and the great there will sometimes be a test to see if you get more than the obligatory nod. By hitch-hiking from Toronto to Lexington, I'd qualified for 15 minutes of the great man's time, and then he started to show me out, kindly walking me around his machine shop, and mentioning that he happened to be doing some free-lance work for the Canadian atomic power agency at the time. Here came the test: "You don't happen to know the atomic number of uranium do you?" By sheerest chance I'd been reading an article on deviant versions of Mendeleev's Table that morning, so I chirpily said "Yes, sir, it's XYZ point ABC," to three decimal places. I passed! He melted into friendly conversation, and gave me the rest of the afternoon until his wife came along around four and threw me out.

In 1972 I went to Japan, intending to just look around, but since they didn't have any coin laundries I fell in twelve years of building 400 of them all over the country, studying Japanese with a staffer in the National Diet, helping a nephew of the Emperor in business, and generally having a good time.

Since 1984 I've had a couple of business careers, two families, three daughters, two grand-daughters so far and currently I'm studying Chinese, angling for a way of getting a PhD or something at BeiDai -- which ain't gonna be easy.

It is said that the average billionaire has gone broke 2.4 times, so currently in genteel poverty I am 5/6ths of the way there.

Again, many thanks for the good work you do: you're a huge asset to the community, so it's a small pleasure to run across you here to be able to say Thank you!

And best wishes,
David Lloyd-Jones.

Welcome to the forum.

 

[DVDR_Dog]

Dayum that's quite a pedigree. My former boss (RIP) was one of the original architect engineers of the ARPNET, a great guy to work for and learn from. I too have been around the block (not the world as you have) so please hang around and share some of your knowledge with us. The members here are a friendly bunch and appreciate sharing tips and techniques. Welcome aboard.

 

[David Lloyd-Jones]

Do you have a name?
-dlj.

 

[DVDR_Dog]

Joe Contino, Motorola at the time. He then owned a company that sold discrete electronic components and various network and computer hardware just about anything in that area. That was my job among other things. I had a chance to deal with and operate commercial grade computers, servers and network hardware. from all the major OEMs. I also had the luxury of taking ownership of any of that hardware without cost to me, quite a valuable education. I worked together with him on different project ventures, including digital signage. I designed and deployed some of the early signage that content and signs were completely remotely autonomous managed over cellular networks. He sold it and that was one of our big winners.
I now work for a big local company involved with VoIP and various aspects of cloud-based UCaaS, DaaS, etc. I work in the provisioning and deployment of premise located hardware department. My last company had changed direction since my direct superior passed away and the Pandemic had a huge effect on it's volume. I took the opportunity to move away from the big city and now have a job with a short commute outside of what has turned into a very dangerous city