I'm glad you found me. The web is so big, and this place so small. Anyway, I'm one of the guys behind this whole site.
I have several major activities that you might want to note.
I've done a lot of things since getting involved with computers. It started out with a BS degree in Computer Science and some job experince with NCR equipment in the mid 70s. I was hooked. Computers are more like a hobby than work. After a stint working with Univerisy of Missouri, Kansas City, I was sufficiently prepared to make the leap into IBM mainframes. And a major leap it was to work for TWA in the mainframe reservations system. Programming and diagnosis in the airline environment are nothing like traditional programming. As different in philosophy as structured design is from object oriented design. Some things are the same (ie the machine still works with ADD, MOVE, etc) but there was a major paradigm shift.
TWA proved a fascinating place. Due to my experience in smaller systems I became involved with meeting the needs of TWA's travel agency base. We worked on accounting and reservations systems and the communications that made the computers work together. Shortly after the PC came out we ported the agency application to a PC platform. And then to a UNIX platform. I became heavily involved in inter-computer communications.
The airline industry has always had a high degree of communications among themselves, so that anyone could sell a plane seat on anyone else. This required data links between the airlines. I was involved in seriously upgrading these links. Then TWA got into the dial-in business with products to allow small users, both travel agents and commercial secretaries, to make reservations. I supported the dial-in networks, especially as they grew internationally.
Eventually all honeymoons end. My time with TWA was transferred to a data processing company called PARS which was then slurped up by the Computer Reservation System (CRS) marketing company called WORLDSPAN. Worldspan invited me to join them in Atlanta (but I'm home in Kansas City), an offer which I turned down.
Instead, and with a pleasant severance package for the time I'd spent with TWA/PARS/WORLDSPAN, Mark Wickersham (aka webster aka xim) and I got together and decided there was enough room in town for another consulting company. FORTHRIGHT Systems and Consulting, Inc, was born in July of 1993.
FORTHRIGHT's first major customer was needing a way to reduce communications costs from their international dial-in users. Having the previous WORLDSPAN experience to draw on, we were able to dramatically reduce their communications charges by developing a new concept in dial-in -- let all the PCs in a single office share a single dial-modem by consolidating via a gateway PC. This product has been online since March, 1994, connecting users from their offices or homes to the Worldspan CRS.
FORTHRIGHT has also been committed to providing small business consulting
services at a price that small businesses can afford. We have developed
several relationships that are mutually beneficial, providing everything
from hardware support to software analysis. We'll even do custom programming
for a moderate fee. And we feel our customers are satisfied with the
products they receive.
Throughout my career of the last 20 years I've always been fascinated by computer hardware. I never had any training in electronics, but the fascination was alive and well.
Working with communications and at hardware level in a number of machines, I've developed quite a respect for the engineers who build the boards and circuits we take for granted in our PCs. From the software side, I found the task of controlling hardware fascinating. Especially on those occasions when there were problems that turned out to be sequence and/or timing problems. But I always felt that I was working against a "black box" that was just beyond my comprehension.
Then came the need for a watchdog system to keep the network boxes running. I have an engineer on staff (Nick) who worked along side me as we tried to develop a watchdog system that would work for us. First, we built a simple device that SCREAMed if we didn't push characters out a serial port. Then we improved by moving it onto the PC bus, bypassing the serial port. Then we added this, and that, until we have the PC WATCHDOG SYSTEM. The greatest pleasure came from writing the device drivers (first, DOS and WINDOWS and now SCO Unix and Linux). I love interfacing with the hardware.
A local company turned up in need of some FORTH code for an imbedded system. (Actually, they had the code but needed it migrated to a newer Forth Kernel.) I've dealt with a moderate amount of Forth (as well as C, C++, Assemblers of numerous forms, APL, FORTRAN, etc.) and was intrigued by the ROM/6502 environment. It certainly isn't on the cutting edge of technology, but was a great step toward blending hardware with software control.
We've had inquiries about home medical devices and farm equipment (now that
the tractors are HIGHLY computerized). We'd love to do more of this kind
of work. Just ask us.
I was brought up as a church-attending Christian, recognizing the values of individual worth and dignity in the site of God. Our church is served primarily by lay (unpaid) ministers volunteering time in the service of our God. We recognize the scriptures as encouraging us to encounter God today, speaking from the pages of the Holy Bible, the Book of Mormon (a record of Jewish people led to the Americas about 600 BC whose civilization lasted about 1000 years) and the Doctrine and Covenants (a record of God speaking through his prophets to the church in the last 170 years).
As is stated in the Book of Mormon, "we are in the service of God when we are in the service of our fellow man". I am pleased now to be able to offer my ministry as pastor to the members of the Bethel Congregation of the Community of Christ.