Category: Memoirs of James Pate Williams Jr

I have a USB 3.5-inch floppy drive on my late 2015 computer. I have just been time transported to Friday, March 3, 1995. I found a legacy 3.5-inch floppy disk in my old computer stuff. The disk had CPPDOS and WINCPP on it. I had taught myself C++ (CPP) on my mom and pop early 1995 IBM compatible personal computer. Up until that era I had been using my Saturday, April 30, 1988 Commodore Amiga 2000, the IBM compatible computers and SUN UNIX computer at LaGrange College (1990 – 1994). The windows version on my 1995 computer was Windows 3.1. Sometime in 1995 I transitioned with difficulty to Windows 95. Thus, begins my backing up of all my personally copyrighted software.

I just walked by Country’s Barbecue Restaurant to find out for the second day that business has no coffee to sell. It seems like their order of coffee went to Country’s in Columbus, Georgia. I also went by my friend’s art gallery:

http://thecochrancollection.com

Wes and Bob Godfrey were talking so I meandered on down to the Main Street Pub to waste money on a glass of orange juice. When am I going to learn you can’t meet potential new friends at an art gallery or a local alcoholics dive? I wish I had a female companion but:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%27est_la_vie_(phrase)

I do have several missing items such as three guitars, two cameras, two cellphones, and a Vizio television, etc. which according to my sister Susan Williams Harrison were pawned for her addictions by my former roommate etc. Cyndi(a) Darlene Burks-Burden.

Thanks,

Pate

I am a musical hobbyist at playing instruments not a seasoned professional musician. I guess I could have been a professional guitarist had I not been so insane in my youth. My father bought me a 1964 Gibson SG Standard and Fender Bandmaster amplifier from George G. Daniel for $500. The guitar and amp were my graduation present from high school when I was 17 years old. Within a year I had broken the neck of the guitar in a fit of rage at my father. See I had pawned the amplifier to get money to cover a drug debt and my dad refused to get the amp out of the Columbus pawn shop. The guitar was half-assed repaired by an Atlanta luthier using my dad’s money sometime in the 1970s, but its play ability was not that great. I finally sold the guitar back to George for about $1500 in the era 2009 to 2011. See George is very generous with his hard-earned money.

The Christmas of 2012 was the best holiday season of my life. Cyndi(a) Darlene Burks-Burden, Mister Buddy Princeton, and I were still living at my parent’s last house at 601 Hill Street, LaGrange, Georgia 30241, 1-706-884-7115. I had lived in that house since either 1960 or 1961 except for about four years away in Atlanta and Columbus. I had many exciting and fun holidays at that now 99-year-old house; however, Christmas 2012 was the best of all my 66 years. Mister  Buddy Princeton is an AKC registered Willoughby Chinese pug (Canis familiaris) who was whelped on Sunday, May 27, 2012. Cyndi and I came up with name Mister Buddy Princeton because I objected to Prince Buddy Princeton due to the fact, I wants Buddy to be a pug of the people and not despised royalty. I was responsible for the Mister part, we both agreed on Buddy, and Cyndi(a) came up with Princeton in honor of the last place that the phenomenal and singular Albert Einstein taught and worked. Cyndi(a) was on methadone, Medically Assisted Therapy,  which I was more than happy to purchase that necessary and sufficient medication for her at a cost of $10 – $12 USD per day. Mister Buddy Princeton was the child that Cyndi(a) and I could not physically conceive. Heck Cyndi(a) had lived with me off and on since 2010 and I did not even care to have sexual relations with her since I then had Hepatitis-C and other mitigating factors. That Christmas was all about Buddy. We had an exquisite Christmas tree and nice decorations on our side porch so Buddy would have a beautiful first Christmas. Unfortunately, the bliss of that Christmas could not last since I was running out of financial resources and my older sisters, Susan Williams Harrison, and Nancy Lord Williams Fabbri wanted to sell the house and get Cyndi(a) out of my life altogether. I will reiterate that depressing set of events later in a true downer post. One thing you can say for me, I am loyal to my current only three living loves, two human females, and one canine male. It is indeed bad that Cyndi(a) accidentally lost all the Christmas 2012 pictures of Buddy opening his presents.

I distinctly recall Herr Doctor Professor Gunter Meyer, PhD, etc. of the Georgia Institute of Technology Department of Mathematics. I had him for the following courses:

1. Math 4348 Partial Differential Equations Winter 1982 A
2. Math 4640 Scientific Computing I Summer 1982 B
3. Math 6341 Partial Differential Equations I Fall 1982 B
4. Math 6342 Partial Differential Equations II Winter 1983 D

The 4000 level mathematics courses were primarily for junior and/or senior math majors and the 6000 tier courses for traditionally graduate school math majors. I made a D in Math 6342 due to the fact I did not solve a computer-based problem that Professor Meyer assigned. I would go and hang out with Dr. Meyer in his office quite a lot. He denigrated me for studying “ancient history in chemistry and physics” when I asked him about the expansion of the distance between interacting electrons used in the quantum mechanical perturbation theory calculation of the total energy of the Helium atom.  Dr. Meyer stated back in 1982 that he traveled to Washington, District of Columbia, our capital, frequently to report partial differential equation calculation results on nuclear reactors for the Department of Energy. I got in contact via telephone with Dr. Meyer in either 2011 or 2014 I forget which year to ask if he remembered me and he stated he could not recollect having me as a student. That sort of hurt my ego and feelings but in defense of Dr. Meyer, he had a long and illustrious career professing at Georgia Tech, and he met a whole lot of students.

I have my summer 1978 – Now 2019 software development legacy to safeguard. I own the copyrights on 99+% of the open source software I created in my Commodore Amiga 2000 and Word-Wide-Web computer experience on MindSpring.com (December 1995 – ?), EarthLink.com (? – 2011?), AT&T (2011 – 2013), and Spectrum.com (February 14, 2014 – Now). I made paper copies of my May 1988 to sometime in the mid-1990s open source software in mainly Modual-2 for Chairperson Professor Doctor Fay Adcock Riddle, PhD (only showing her terminal degree, she has many degrees as me or more than me). She finally became exasperated and inundated with computer program paper from me and she was forced to pitch out or recycle my daisy wheel printer paper. I think Professor Carlisle at Auburn University had a tape reel from the Data General Eclipse line of minicomputer at LaGrange College containing among other software, computer code that I generated in my epoch summer 1978 to 1987. That code was probably given to Professor Carlisle by Professor Kenneth Cooper, PhD, etc.

I am in a dilemma about my software development legacy. Store it on flash drives (USB solid state drives) and place the drives in a bank’s safety deposit box or use Apple’s iCloud and/or Microsoft’s OneDrive. Cloud storage costs money also and is ephemeral. I have a 3.5” floppy drive that connects to a USB computer port. That way I can transfer my legacy 1995 – 2005 floppies to a longer-lived media. I have lots of CDs and DVDs also that need archiving. The archival process is going to arduous and long in terms of copying times.

The title of this missive is from “Burning of the Midnight Lamp” by Jimi Hendrix. For the first time since the auspicious year of 2014 for me, I have had to spend my birthday, Christmas, and probably New Years Eve alone. The year 2014 was phenomenal for me since I beat hepatitis-C with the assistance of about $100,000 USD of Harvoni which I assume was provided free of charge (actually $9.00 for three months copay out of pocket for me) by the pharmaceutical manufacturer in exchange for my personal data. I seem to recall I contracted hep-C by needle sharing heroin with a recovering drug addict prostitute I met at Renewal House in 1975 and we shared a makeshift rig in February 1976 when the House was about to close for good. As you can tell I was still interested in illicit drugs after my treatment at Renewal House under Professor Joan Read’s (Chairperson Psychology Department Georgia State University) psychological warfare on me. Coincidentally, I continued some illegal drug usage until sometime in the early to mid-1980s. I also relearned how to drive in either late 2014 or 2015 after approximately a year of not driving my old gasohol guzzling 2003 Mercury Mountaineer V8 2-wheel drive vehicle.

Thanks,

James Pate Williams, Jr.

Bachelor of Arts Chemistry LaGrange College 1979

Bachelor of Science Computer Science LaGrange College 1994

Master of Software Engineering Auburn University 2000

Doctor of Philosophy Computer Science Auburn University 2005

Gratis Open Source Computer Software Developer Since Summer 1978

1980 – 1983 Graduate Work in Chemistry and Mathematics at Georgia Tech

A Current Website I developed for my friends Wesley “Wes” and Missy Cochran:

http://thecochrancollection.com/Home