User:Pat Palmer

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Beginning in 2008, I have done system administration and programming for a group of algae scientists in the Phycology Section at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, where I wrote many web services such as this one which shows data about one algal species. Since 2012, I have worked out of my home, part-time and with a flexible schedule. From 2002 until 2010, I taught computer courses at the Univ. of Penn. and remained as a research associate for a professor in the CIS department there until 2020.

I have an M. S. in computer science (Univ. of Tenn., 1983), and I started my computing career in 1984 as a member of technical staff at Bell Laboratories, which was originally part of AT&T but later split itself into many companies such as Lucent (now Alcatel-Lucent). For more than a decade there, I worked on everything from embedded systems to light-wave communications to network operations systems. During my years at Bell Labs, the company slowly fell apart around my ears and former colleagues scattered to the four winds. In the late 1990's, I left Bell Labs for various one- or two-year jobs, where funding continually fell through so I had to keep moving on.

Along the way, I got a master's degree in public sector management (Fels Center, Univ. of Penn., 1992).

In the late 1970's, I spent 2 years repairing telephone switches for GTE in southwest Virginia and worked in some of the last Strowger switching offices remaining in the United States. During that time, I also repaired electromechanical telephone switching systems made by Leich, that had so-called common control units for call routing--in effect, a fully electromechanical, special-purpose computer. I could see numbers being stored in registers as people dialed, which is a pretty good introduction to how computers really work.

In the early 1970's, I completed all the coursework required for a Ph D in Germanic linguistics (at the Univ. of Tenn.), reading Old High German, Old Norse, Icelandic, Middle High German, Afrikaans, Pennsylvania Dutch, Yiddish, various regional German dialects under direction from Professors Nordsieck and Kratz, and also studying Spanish, Latin, and Russian. Unfortunately, I never completed that degree, but I did read a lot of interesting literature. I have a B. A. in German, with a minor in English (Univ. of Tenn., 1974), and while an undergraduate, I managed to complete a couple of years of calculus and a year of physics, which stood me in good stead when I converted to being a computer scientist.

I have worked all over in this wiki, but mainly in the Computers workgroup. I formerly served on the CZ governing council, partly because no one else would, but also in hopes that we could somehow save the project.

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this is a User:Samuel_C._Smith/new_page

NOTE to self: Go read Service_Oriented_Architecture_/_Service_Orientation sometime very soon.

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