Not an Alan Mathison Turing Nor Kurt Donald Cobain by James Pate Williams, Jr. BA, BS, MSwE, PhD

I used to tell myself if I ever had to get a “crazy check” (Social Security Supplemental Income), I would commit hara-kiri. Unfortunately, when the time came on February 14, 2014, I failed to have the bravery to make good on my former promise. My parents tried to get me to go onto the federal government’s dole way back in 1989. It is indeed fortuitous that the Social Security Administration’s independently  appointed private psychologist decided I was too sane to get the handout from our not so benevolent governent in that long-forgotten era. See I only had one degree in 1989, a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry from LaGrange College, three unsuccessful years at Georgia Tech, and approximately eleven years of open source computer software development. The state of Georgia did have the “heart” for me to grovel before that not so benign entity by having me do a year as an indentured servant at the old school New Ventures organization. That really helped further develop my self-esteem, NOT! I just fail to make good on some of my oaths unlike the great computer scientist Alan Mathison Turing or the troubled but brilliant musician and lyricist Kurt Donald Cobain.

Unknown's avatar

Author: jamespatewilliamsjr

My whole legal name is James Pate Williams, Jr. I was born in LaGrange, Georgia approximately 70 years ago. I barely graduated from LaGrange High School with low marks in June 1971. Later in June 1979, I graduated from LaGrange College with a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry with a little over a 3 out 4 Grade Point Average (GPA). In the Spring Quarter of 1978, I taught myself how to program a Texas Instruments desktop programmable calculator and in the Summer Quarter of 1978 I taught myself Dayton BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) on LaGrange College's Data General Eclipse minicomputer. I took courses in BASIC in the Fall Quarter of 1978 and FORTRAN IV (Formula Translator IV) in the Winter Quarter of 1979. Professor Kenneth Cooper, a genius poly-scientist taught me a course in the Intel 8085 microprocessor architecture and assembly and machine language. We would hand assemble our programs and insert the resulting machine code into our crude wooden box computer which was designed and built by Professor Cooper. From 1990 to 1994 I earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from LaGrange College. I had a 4 out of 4 GPA in the period 1990 to 1994. I took courses in C, COBOL, and Pascal during my BS work. After graduating from LaGrange College a second time in May 1994, I taught myself C++. In December 1995, I started using the Internet and taught myself client-server programming. I created a website in 1997 which had C and C# implementations of algorithms from the "Handbook of Applied Cryptography" by Alfred J. Menezes, et. al., and some other cryptography and number theory textbooks and treatises.

Leave a comment