Who
I was born at Chicago’s Mt. Sinai Hospital a week before the worst blizzard the city has ever seen. This can hardly be considered a coincidence. Since then, I’ve lived in Gage Park, Marquette Park, Oak Lawn, Evanston, Rogers Park, Bloomingdale (what?), Chinatown, Printer’s Row, Forest Glen, and River Forest where I currently reside with my wife, two kids, and a big brown dog in a crumbling Tudor previously inhabited by feral animals.
I won my first guitar after a hot streak at the craps table at Vegas Night at the now-defunct Lourdes High School when I was seven years old. I have been a professional musician since age thirteen and continue to work today in sessions and on stage as time permits.
When I was a sophomore in high school, I would hang out after school at the Oak Lawn Public Library and use their Apple ][e computer to create primitive text-based adventure games and a crude DBMS to store song lyrics. I can still remember at least half of the 6502 microprocessor’s machine code. I went on to get a BS from Northwestern and an MS from UIC (aka University of Illinois - Cement), both in Computer Science. My Master’s thesis ran to about 100 pages; the title alone could literally bore you to death.
I’ve been developing software professionally for twenty years, the last twelve doing automated, high-velocity equity and equity derivatives trading. I work for a well-known, medium-sized trading firm in Chicago whom I’ll leave nameless for the moment. But regardless, the opinions expressed herein are exclusively my own. Who else would want them?
When I’m not chasing kids, bugs, or gigs, I try to keep our house from falling down around us and to find a little time for writing therapy.
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What
Music, politics, kids, sports, current events, computers, technology, the interwebs, science, math, writing, food & drink, financial markets, extreme home repair.
