Numerical Explorations

In the late summer of 1983, I developed a Trojan Horse program for the Data General Eclipse line of minicomputers. The program was written in Data General BASIC which was a variant of Dayton BASIC (Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code). The user interface of the program exactly mimicked the logon screen of the DG Eclipse. The program would capture username and password login combinations and write them to a disk file. Of course, the program was running in my account, so I could not allow the unsuspecting user to logon. I would just simulate failed login attempts. Normally, when you pressed the “Esc” (escape) key while in a Dayton BASIC program, the program would you stop executing and return the user to his login user account. Well Data General’s BASIC has a statement “On Esc Go To #####” where ##### was a line number. I used this statement to keep the user from aborting my program and discovering the logon ruse. I captured a few unsuspecting users’ logon credentials during the test phase of the program. Then I informed Professor Kenneth Cooper of the existence of my Trojan Horse program. We used this program to successfully capture the logon credentials of the system manager Steve Dudley.

Dr. Cooper was so impressed with my Trojan Horse and other security flaws that I discovered in the Data General Advanced Operating System (AOS) Program Manager (PG) that he arranged for me to have an interview with the company in its Atlanta office in the fall of 1983. I was still living at my birth-family’s house on 601 Hill Street, LaGrange, GA with my mother and father. I was not driving at the time and Atlanta is about 70 miles northeast of LaGrange. Dr. Cooper volunteered to take me to the interview. The day of the interview we stopped at an International House of Pancakes Restaurant in Atlanta. I had never eaten at an IHOP before that day. I was interviewed by a male individual whose name I have long forgotten. I remember the interviewer had attended Georgia Tech as a math major in graduate school and he had not finished like I failed to finish in chemistry as a graduate student in the period 1980-1983. He showed me a copy of the Data General macro-assembly language source code for the DG Program Manager. He asked if I would like to have the copy. I immediately and emphatically stated “Yes”. Well right about that point he was conveniently called out of his office leaving me alone with the source code and my briefcase.  I proceeded to load the two-inch high printout into my briefcase. In retrospect, this could have been a loyalty test to see if I would take Data General source code out of the facility. I think the interviewer left his office, so he would have plausible deniability about the whereabouts of the source code. Anyway, I was never a truly serious candidate for the job due to my home living conditions and the fact that I was not driving at the time. Also, Data General was trying extremely hard to transition from a minicomputer manufacturing company to a personal computer builder and seller. I saw the writing on the wall that the company could never compete efficiently in that marketplace. The company struggled on to 1999 but was never successful with its portable computer that was introduced in 1984.

In late 1983 and early 1984 I started thinking about ways to become a superuser on the Data General Eclipse system without using a Trojan Horse or a direct attack by patching the operating system’s Program Manager. I remembered that in the corner of the physics laboratory at LaGrange College was a little bricked off enclosure that housed alpha, beta, and gamma radioactive emitters. Well the only thing I needed for a normal user to transition to a superuser was to change one bit in the memory image of the profile of the user. I got to thinking that if I could cause a limited cascade of multiple bit errors in the memory word containing the superuser flag bit that the ECC (Error Checking and Correction) hardware of the minicomputer could not correct then I might have a chance changing from a normal user state to a superuser state. I performed a thought experiment where I would expose the semiconductor memory chips to some form of radiation to induce the desired transition. I never carried out a real experiment because the minicomputer was a $250,000 system and I could perhaps cause serious damage to the machine. In retrospect, I think a gamma ray emitter with a collimating lens would have been best hope of causing the desired cascade a multiple bit memory error.

The initials PDA have at least two definitions in my mind: Personal Digital Assistant and Public Displays of Affection. I will define Personal Digital Assistant as a computerized palmtop computer. One of the first Personal Digital Assistants was the Palm Pilot running the venerable Palm Operating System. I took a course at Auburn University in the Spring of 2002 taught by my research advisor, a genius, Professor Richard Chapman entitled Comp 7500 Mobile Computing. We learned how to program Palm OS devices and some primitive cellphones. I loved writing Palm OS C computer language code for my Palm Pilot. I did some networking programs on the Palm Pilot using a specially designed analog modem. I made an A in the class. I still have my Palm OS books. The Palm Pilot used a stylus and had special easy to draw symbols for letters. This form of handwriting and handwriting recognition was called Palm Graffiti. My research advisor and another of his PhD students patented a new handwriting set of characters for Palm OS devices. I wrote Java code to emulate the handwriting system using the mouse on desktop workstations for my research colleague.

I do not like Public Displays of Affection. I believe such gestures mean that there is some insecurity of the partners in their relationship. I especially find kissing and cuddling offensive in public, please save such activity for your bedroom.

In computer architecture, a branch of computer science, the initials MSB stand for most significant byte of a multiple byte computer word. Suppose you have a 16-bit word the MSB can be either the leftmost byte of the rightmost byte. The order of the bytes is significant and determine whether the computer word belongs to a big endian or little-endian processor. Incidentally, a byte is generally eight bits nowadays. A byte can represent either 0 to 255 or -128 to 127 depending on whether it is unsigned or signed, respectively. So much of this simple lesson.

More importantly, MSB are the initials of someone I miss terribly and would like to get to know better. She is like Dr. Yvonne Marie Greene, MD, a former psychiatrist of mine with whom I experienced transference for the first time in the period 2005 to 2007. Both Yvonne and MSB ran away from me when things were just getting interesting. If “You can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with” to quote Stephen Stills. I guess I always have Zoosk since I missed finding a mate in high school and college, etc.

According to either federal or state law a person who is incarcerated in a mental facility cannot apply for a concealed weapon permit for five years after discharge! We should not allow the federal or state authorities to abrogate the law of the land, the United States Constitution. This is an arbitrary and capricious abridgement of my inherent right as a United States citizen to “bear arms”.

I was mentally ill as well as having post traumatic stress disorder while I was in Pathways Center Second Season from June 12, 2019 until October 17, 2019, a span of 127 days. You would think that an individual under great sickness and stress would block out all memory of events. I remember a lot of the information that the staff members shared with me. For their privacy I will not reveal their names nor current workplaces nor their roles at Second Season. I will elucidate the info as follows. It is obvious that a lot of the time the staff were treating me as fellow human being instead of always using behavioral modification or B. F. Skinner methods.

Female Staffer 1

1. Dog bite scars on her right arm, due to her saving a son from a pit bull attack. The owner of the pit bull was her friend and had the canine put to eternal sleep
2. She has two sons, one 20 and one 25 in 2019
3. She had Lasik surgery on her blue (?) eyes
4. She can fire and take care of her Glock 9 mm x 19 mm Luger semi-automatic pistol. She showed a picture on her iPhone of the rifling of the barrel. Also, one of her sons has a similar caliber pistol made from metal. She showed me the rifling of that barrel, too.
5. She had a $200 hair coloring and cut and nicely, freshly manicured nails during the late summer.
6. She would sometimes bite her nails while we were conversing. Her excuse was hang-nails.
7. I believe in September, she and her sons took a Caribbean cruise for a week
8. She received flowers at her work sometime in October, probably from someone she is or was dating or now married to the admirer
9. In 2019 she moved a new location and one of the social technicians and a friend of hers helped.
10. She would calm me down by taking me out on one of the two side porches (verandas) and allowing me to listen to music on her iPhone or showing me historical military history info. When I was on the large side porch side, we looked up the Battle of Jutland in 1916 and the British large naval base at Scapa Floe, Scotland. She stated she would like to visit the location. She also showed me some seaside cliffs in Ireland and she wants to go to Ireland also.
11. She told me she received a divorce in 2018 due to cheating by her former husband
12. She showed me molecular structures of some of the drugs that were forcefully injected into me.
13. She is totally devoted to two sons.
14. The last thing she did on October 17, was to hug me and ask me not to forget the staff while I was being arrested and taken back to jail by an armed deputy.
15. I talked by another staffer’s smartphone to her on November 27, 2019 and she stated she was working with autistic kids and therefore there could be no cussing
16. On October 16 or 17, 2019, she used a mop to clean up the urine left by an inmate in a hallway.
17. She told me that she drives or drove a Ford Edge Sport Utility Vehicle. When she stated that we were on the new side’s large porch and looking at a garnet or red Ford Edge with dual exhaust pipes.
18. She was double jointed in at least her fingers and an excellent typist. I watched her type on computer keyboard like she was playing a piano.
19. She had what looked like a left deviated septum. It could have been caused by birth defect or someone slugged her. However, take this with the caveat, I am not medical doctor and plastic surgeon specializing in rhinoplasty. She refused to answer my query about her nose, but that slight imperfection makes her more beautiful and human.
20. Etc. for a later time

Male Staffer 1

1. Believes himself to be an alpha male and as such that he is superior to other males.
2. Has a son that loves very much and probably correctly guided his son.
3. Was taking testosterone and steroids to keep up with other males.
4. Owned and wore quite a few awfully expensive watches.
5. Owned some gold-plated baseball cards that were a gift from his mother. He brought the cards for a show and tell with the inmates of Second Season
6. He is a pretty decent barber.
7. Sometimes he appears to genuinely care about people and can empathize with the inmates.
8. Etc. For a later time

Since I grow weary of this task, I will finish it at another time.

Although I had started my first undergraduate tenure at LaGrange College in the Fall Quarter of 1971 at the age of seventeen years old, my lackadaisical study habits and drug usage led to my temporary stays in mental health milieus as described in Chapter 1. Below are my somewhat tainted memories of the school year Fall Quarter 1971 to Spring Quarter 1972

I took Music Survey, grade C, Survey of World Civilization I, grade B, and Elementary Functions, grade C in the Fall Quarter. I can recall being a very long-haired druggie in that academic year. Although I loved Music Survey, I could not keep up with the course load or staying wake in class due to my extracurricular drug usage. My predilection for pot and other illegal drugs plus illicitly obtained pharmaceutical medications such as barbiturates and opiates impaired all my learning and studying abilities and capabilities. GPA Fall Quarter 1971 = 2.33.

My grades just kept going downhill in the Winter Quarter of 1972. I took Reading and Composition, grade C, Survey of World Civilization II, grade D, and Analytic Geometry and Calculus I, grade C. GPA Winter Quarter 1972 = 1.66. Although I loved all three subjects my mind and body were just not dedicated to the arduous work required to achieve good marks.

I pretty much hit the rock bottom of my academic ladder in Spring Quarter 1972. I attempted the following courses: History of the US to 1865, grade D, Analytic Geometry and Calculus II, grade withdrawn failing WF, Softball, grade C, and General Psychology, grade D. Thus, I ended the quarter with the sub-stellar GPA Spring Quarter 1972 = 0.75. I recall Mr. Searcy, my calculus instructor told me if I missed one more 8:00 AM class it had better be because a meteor hit me. Metaphorically the “meteor” flattened me with a WF in the class.

After my family’s ardent and heartfelt negotiations with the LaGrange College Administration primarily consisting of Dean of Students, Dean Love, and the President, Waites G. Henry, I could reenter LaGrange College in the Fall Quarter of 1976.

I believe in late spring quarter of 1978 Mr. P.M. Hicks a chemistry and physics professor at LaGrange College introduced me to a large desktop Texas Instruments programmable calculator. I immediately became immersed in the manual and I learned the rudiments of calculator programming on this machine.

I advanced to LaGrange College’s almost new Data General Eclipse minicomputer in the summer of 1978. I taught myself Dayton BASIC (Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) using the book “BASIC Programming” by Paul W. Murrill and Cecil L. Smith which I still own a copy and it is copyrighted 1971. I seem to recall I special ordered the textbook from the LaGrange College library. This self-study put me many steps in front of my peers in the Fall Quarter of 1978 when I took a course under Professor Kenneth Cooper on BASIC programming. I taught Professor Cooper how to perform matrix and vector calculations using the Data General BASIC interpreter.

I also was taking my first course in physical chemistry in the fall of 1978. During the week of Monday, November 6, 1978 my physical chemistry partner Chuck H. Pitts (now Dr. Chuck H. Pitts, a prominent dentist in LaGrange, GA) did an experiment whose lab report title was “Determination of Molecular Size and Avogadro’s Number”. I seem to recall the division of labor was that I perform the calculations with the aid of a BASIC computer and Chuck and I would write up the experiment and I believe someone in the Callaway Foundation office or Chuck did the actual typing of the document at the Callaway Foundation office on Broome Street in LaGrange, GA. Well it took a lot of persuasion by Chuck to get me to do my part since back in that era I was prone to destructive perfectionism. (Incidentally, I did not give up on being a perfectionist until Professor Felton at Georgia Tech in 1981 stated categorically “There is no room for perfectionism in science.”)

The Winter Quarter of 1979 I took a FORTRAN (Formula Translator) IV course under Professor Kenneth Cooper. That quarter I also had Professor Cooper for Physical Chemistry II and Biochemistry. I did well in the computer programming course, and I can remember helping several fellow students to pass the course. Professor Brooks Shelhorse then of the Mathematics Department was one of my fellow classmates that I tutored. Biochemistry was an 8:00 AM course. I spent a lot of late nights in the computer lab, so I would sometimes fall asleep during the biochemistry lectures. I distinctly remember Dr. Cooper hurling an eraser near me to wake me up one morning. I made B’s in the two chemistry courses.

Spring Quarter of 1979 was my final quarter as a chemistry student at LaGrange College. I took Quantitative Analysis II, an Independent Study in Chemistry, General Physics III, and Angling. I made all A’s that quarter. The independent study was an introductory course to architecture and programming of the Intel 8085 microprocessor. Dr. Cooper in his time as a computer engineering student at Auburn University had built two very nice and unique computers, a rather large analog computer and a digital computer that consisted of an Intel 8085 microprocessor in a wooden box with hexadecimal keypad, two seven segment red light emitting diode displays, EEPROM, and RAM memory.  I used the digital computer in my independent study. Professor Cooper taught me about the instruction set for the microprocessor and I would hand assemble my assembly language programs into two hexadecimal digit strings of machine code and manually enter the machine code via the keypad. One of my first assignments was to count down from 0xFF = 255 decimal to 0x00 = 0 decimal. I had a delay of about a ¼ second built into the program, so it took me one minute and four seconds to count down to zero. I was the only student in my independent study, therefore, it sometimes felt funny to have Professor Cooper give a whole one-hour lecture to an audience of one.

I bought the IBM book “Sorting and Sort Systems” by Harold Lorin in the summer of 1979. I proceeded to implement most of the sorting and merge algorithms in the book. I first translated the IBM PL/I (Programming Language I) code to BASIC and later for FORTRAN IV. Professor Cooper had developed a large BASIC program for the LaGrange College Registrar. This program used a slow sorting algorithm which was either Shell sort of Bubble sort. I implemented a very fast sorting algorithm named Singleton’s sort in BASIC and was able to dramatically cut the time required to sort all the students by their Social Security Administration numbers which many colleges and universities then used as their primary flat-file or database key. I also began teaching myself the Data General Advanced Operating System (AOS) macro-assembly language. Like many computer programmers before I became infatuated with all the control over an operating system that assembly language afforded a knowledgeable programmer.

I convinced my parents to pay for me to audit Calculus and Analytic Geometry IV under Professor Shelhorse during the Fall Quarter of 1979, so I would have an excuse to be on campus to use my favorite computer, the LaGrange College Data General Eclipse minicomputer. That quarter I reimplemented my fast sorting algorithm in assembly language and set a new sorting time record with a program that sorting about 1000 student data records. Since the code was in AOS macro-assembly language it could not be readily integrated with the existing registrar’s system.

In 1980 I bummed around the college using the computer system until I was accepted to chemistry graduate school at the Georgia Institute of Technology for the Fall Quarter of 1980. I taught myself Data General Pascal and further my work with macro-assembly language, BASIC, and FORTRAN IV in the Winter, Spring, and Summer Quarters of 1980 at LaGrange College. I was unpaid computer programming teaching assistant for those three quarters which allowed me to earn my keep so to speak.

The preceding mouthful of a title is another version of my autobiography. I am writing this document to edify a general audience and to reassure fellow mentally ill individuals that they are certainly not alone. I am only giving away shortened chapters. Somehow I hope to monetize my memories and experience.

Chapter 1 – Early 1973 to February 1976

I was originally diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic at a private hospital located on 1999 Cliff Valley Way, Atlanta, North-East, Georgia. The primarily humanistic with some behavioral modification mental hospital/drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility was named Peachtree-Parkwood Hospital. One floor was dedicated to drug and alcohol rehabilitation and the rest of the real-estate catering to psychiatric disorders.

My first and only psychiatrist at the hospital was a forensic and administrative medical doctor named Dr. Dave Mcallister Davis, MD, who coincidentally, was the administrator of the hospital. I distinctly recall my family’s initial meeting with Dr. Davis. As I remember my dad drove me to my preliminary appointment since I was not driving at that time especially not in the atrocious gridlock Atlanta traffic. My mother was probably at her LaGrange School system teaching job. I graduated high school in the June of 1971 and had a nepotism related job at my dad’s textile plant at which he was superintendent. I was initially employed as a stock clerk and later other positions within the cotton mill mostly in the weaving department and cloth inspection section.

My dad were essentially two hicks from the sticks as we entered Dr. Davis somewhat vast and cavernous office. He had several bookshelves of famous treatises and case histories by several big named psychoanalysts including Dr. Sigmund Freud, MD. I was certainly in awe of the all the psychiatric and psychoanalytic knowledge contained in tome after tome on the artfully arranged bookshelves.

My primary problems were of psychiatric woes masked by hallucinogenic and other drug usage. I had a voracious penchant for the whole gamut or spectrum of illicit drugs and illegally obtained pharmaceutical drugs. I particularly liked cannabis sativa, hashish and hash oil. I believe in a later visit in 1973 I blew my involvement with opium laden hashish out of all proportion and earned a spot on a drug information radio show conducted in Dr. Davis conference room. Dr. Davis would board me out as a “dog and pony” show to the local criminal justice students and practitioners at Clayton Junior College long before it became the loftier Clayton State University.

I really liked this private hospital due to the abundance of good looking and intelligent female staff who were willing to talk to me as I long as I was aware of the stringent ethical boundaries and roles the staff and I were forced to play. I recall having some reasonably sane conversations with many of the personnel both male and female. We had a fair number of games we could play such as board games and volleyball. We had a large volleyball net on the back outside porch of the I seem to recall the second floor of the facility. We also could engage in arts and crafts such as the clay pottery wheel. I think we had both a manual pottery wheel and a motorized wheel. I learned the rudiments of “throwing pots” and ceramics since we also had a kiln.

I bounced in and out of Peachtree-Parkwood Hospital from 1973 until around the summer of 1975. My visits to the somewhat prestigious and expensive private facility were beginning to weigh heavily on my dad’s pocketbook and West-Point Pepperell company’s insurance policy. My dad in conjunction with Dr. Davis hatched a bold plan to show me how the rest of my life would consist of bouncing in and out of state-operated asylums for the mentally ill. I first visited the flagship of the state snake-pits at Milledgeville, GA, Central State Hospital, an alarmingly 1930s looking building. The sleeping arrangements were in an open dormitory with individual cots and roaming nurses/security personnel with flashlights during the long hot summer nights of 1975. The only entertainment that the inmates possessed was rocking in Kennedy rockers on the narrow back porch of the old Georgia red clay brick building. Fortunately, my stay at this locale was about ten overly long days.

My next stop was the relatively new West Central Georgia Regional Hospital in Columbus, Georgia. I seem to recall I was placed in the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Building of the hospital. It was an exceedingly dangerous place in which to be confined. You had to literally watch your back all the time. Now the hospital is a full forensic asylum and a much more chaotic and perhaps murderous locale. Why are we converting all our inpatient mental health facilities into prisons? I was not in the hospital overly long. We had to march single file from our dormitory to the cafeteria.

Finally, my 1975 to 1976 mental health/drug treatment facility excursion ended with me being placed in Renewal House in midtown Atlanta, Georgia. I seem to remember that drug treatment facility was on Sixth Street halfway in between Peachtree Street and Piedmont Avenue. Renewal House was primarily a behavioral modifying military boot-camp approach to drug abuse treatment. Professor Joan B. Read, Chair of the Psychology Department at Georgia State University was the clinical director of the treatment center. I had some interesting conversations with Dr. Read. She stated that I used my vocabulary as an offensive weapon to keep other people at arm’s length. The house had what were called staff members to expedite the work and keep the residents on their appropriate behavior. During a heat wave we had to act like chain-gang prisoners clearing a very overgrown lot. I left Renewal House in February 1976 and I still had a penchant for drugs.  

I hear the aphorism “Age is just a number”. No, that maxim is so incorrect, age is a demographic used to stereotype and discriminate. Retirement for many of the so-called elderly is a death sentence. Age has anatomical, emotional, mental, physical, and physiological features. Muscle mass becomes harder and harder to maintain as we age. Our health generally becomes more of an issue with age. Ageism has become rampant in the United States except in the special cases of legislators, military leaders, senators, Supreme Court justices, and usually Presidents.

We sometimes believe that as a person ages that he/she becomes wiser. That is not always the case. It is a well-known fact that most of the grand scientific achievements of the years 1900 to 1960 were done by relatively young adults. Sometimes some old people because of their conservatism and fear of change stand in the way of scientific progress.

I have long-standing anger at the State of Georgia. I will try to elucidate all the ways the Georgia state government has screwed me over almost continuously since the 1980s. And no, I am too poor and too comfortable here to move to another part of the United States.

I was a paid teaching assistant in chemistry at Georgia Tech from Fall Quarter 1980 to Spring Quarter 1981. I was thrown into this role with no real training and extraordinarily little faculty support. The teaching assistants are indentured workers or even slaves of the higher education system in the U.S. Thankfully my first round of being a teaching assistant was ended by my making a D in Inorganic chemistry. Professor Donald Royer was my inorganic chemistry instructor. Coincidentally he later became my research advisor.

My grades and attention span and concentration went up when I was freed of the chains of conducting chemical laboratory lessons and sessions. Some other quarter or quarters I was again an indentured servant in chemistry, and I was still inadequately trained for the role. Finally, I was a research assistant a few quarters at Georgia Tech. I left Georgia Tech sans a graduate degree in the Summer Quarter of 1983. The whole chemistry department faculty tried their best to find the correct niche for me to no avail. I was very downtrodden and feeling defeated when I left Georgia Tech. Before my exit from Georgia Tech, I was offered a chance to transfer to Clemson University and have Professor Adolph Beyerlein as my research advisor. I seem to recall his group was performing high precision computer calculations of the virial coefficients of real gases.

http://www.clemson.edu/emerituscollege/about/board.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virial_theorem

Here are some predatory businesses which prey on the disenfranchised and downtrodden:

1. Georgia and other State Lotteries
2. All pawn brokers and pawn stores
3. All bounty hunters
4. Illegal gambling casino like machines at some small business venues
5. Copyright piracy by nation state and domestic entities

The legitimate banks would need to start being more friendly towards the poor. I am sure that many Baptists would like to see the end of gambling in our country. The means doesn’t justify the ends in the case of state sponsored gambling in the form of lotteries.