Summer of 1969, etc. by James Pate Williams, Jr.

Due to my poor performance in regular English literature, I was forced to retake the class in the summer of 1969. I was in between the sophomore (10) and junior (11) grades. The class was held on July 4, 1969, since we were not allowed a vacation day on Independence Day. Also concurrently on July 4, 1969, the great Atlanta International Pop Festival was held at the Atlanta International Raceway in Hampton, Georgia. A fellow classmate tried to get me to skip class to go to the festival. I decided against skipping class.

Concerts That I Have Attended

1970 or 1971 Muddy Waters at the University of Georgia

1973 (?) Larry Coryell at a small venue in Northeast Atlanta, Georgia

November 30, 1974 “The Relayer Tour” by Yes with the lineup of Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Patrick Moraz, Chris Squire, and Alan White. The Omni Coliseum in Atlanta, Georgia

1975 (?) Jethro Tull at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, Geogia

August 25, 1976 “The Going for the One Tour” by Yes with a lineup of Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Chris Squire, Rick Wakeman, and Alan White

In the early 1970s I saw the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra perform “The Planets” by Gustave Holst and Ravel’s arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”.

Author: jamespatewilliamsjr

My whole legal name is James Pate Williams, Jr. I was born in LaGrange, Georgia approximately 69 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. a., and some other cryptography and number theory textbooks and treatises.

Leave a comment