Gary Larson could tell a story (and a funny one at that) with a cleverly drawn sketch in a box. Poets and novelists beguile or captivate us with a mere string of words. And now the web gives everyone a platform on which to speak their minds in countless public discussion boards and blogs, littering the literary landscape with meager meanderings (and absurd alliteration).So here, grudgingly, I present another personal blog destined to inflict further damage on social progress. I haven't the merest whit of Larson's clever whimsy or Tennyson's poetic flair, but I'll do my best to avoid embarrassment and write only of things about which I have no useful or penetrating insight.
I'll begin with a bit of background. My first name is Daryl, but early on I learned to favor my middle name Mark since none of my grammar school teachers (stern Irish nuns) could pronounce Daryl in a way that didn't sound distinctly feminine. My last name is Dutch, but the lineage includes some German and Austrian for good Teutonic measure. Not much of that survived the 3 generations since my ancestors emigrated, so I'm thoroughly American for better or worse.
I grew up in the tumultuous 1960's and 70's, so I have a strong sense of both the power and failures of people and their governments. I'm not a musician, but have a great love for music - what child of the 60's wouldn't? I grew up in a Catholic household, but abandoned the strident dogma as soon as rational thought kicked in.
Perhaps most crucially, I was influenced early in life to pursue scientific inquiry by my father, a metallurgical engineer who was quiet and strict, but well possessed of a dry wit and boundless curiosity. He was proud, yet often dismayed, that the curiosity passed on to me was all too often evidenced by disassembly of anything mechanical or electronic that I happened to find. I was one of those tinkerers who always found a greater joy in probing the inner workings of a device than in its actual purported use. Which is to say, many of those innocent items either came to an untimely end or a novel re-purpose.
My early education was uneventful as I followed the wisdom of the Japanese saying, "Deru kugi wa utareru" (The nail that sticks up will be hammered down). That worked for awhile, until routine intelligence tests in middle school betrayed me to my parents and teachers.
Sudden enrollment in "gifted" student programs and parental demands for higher grades dampened my enthusiasm for focusing attention on everything BUT whatever the teacher was blathering on about. Fortunately, a wise teacher in 8th grade sparked my interest in mathematics and I found something that actually had educational merit with which I could distract myself during boring classes.
It wasn't until college that I started earning those expected grades while taking courses in math and physics. I found that solving problems was immensely rewarding. Better yet, my notoriously poor memory for facts, dates, and names - something that haunted me throughout elementary school - was now of little consequence since I could analytically derive a needed equation from basic principles instead of memorizing the damn thing.
Such kismet, then, that personal computers became mainstream just as I graduated college. I had delved into logic and binary algebra during high school, but now the computer revolution was here. My love for physics, while undiminished, was deflected toward microprocessors and software development. I had finally found a vocation that merged so many of my favorite things: math, logic, language, and tinkering.
And best of all, I could make computers do my bidding ... yeah, baby!
