User:Oldfarm

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These are lists of articles on subjects that interest me, some written by me, and some by others:

Personal Info

1937-1958: Born in England at Reading, Berkshire, lived in Tadley.
1939-1945: My father went to France in the British Expeditionary Force, was captured following Dunkirk and was a POW in Stalag XX-A.
1941-1942: The woodland north of Tadley was cleared and RAF Aldermaston airfield was built.
1943-1945: The USAAF Eighth Air Force and Ninth Air Force took over the airfield. We lived within the perimeter of the airfield.
1945: My father was on The March (1945) from Poland to Germany for over 3 months.
1947-1948: Worked at rural trades - blacksmithing, coppicing and making besom brooms.
1948: Under the Tripartite System, passed the 11-plus and went to Queen Mary's, a grammar School in Basingstoke
1950: Joined the British Interplanetary Society.
1950: Ownership of the airfield at Aldermaston was transferred from the Air Ministry to the Ministry of Supply, and construction of AWRE began.
1953-58: Served a formal, five-year engineering apprenticeship at Aldermaston working under Dr. William Penney, Dr Henry Hulme and John Dolphin.
1955: Learned to drive in a 1932 Ford Model Y.
1956: Bought a 1933 BSA 3 wheeler.
1950-58: Practiced Judo at the Budokwai with Gunji Koizumi, Trevor Leggett, Geof Gleeson and Charlie Palmer.
1958-60: Marine Engineering Officer with Union-Castle Line and Anglo-Ecuadrian Oil.
1960: Emigrated to the United States, living in Baltimore, Maryland
1960: Worked in shipyards and machine shops in Baltimore.
1961: Worked for Baltimore and Annapolis Railroad in Ferndale, Maryland.
1961-63: Drafted and served in US Army at Fort Jackson (South Carolina), and Fort Wayne (Detroit).
1962: Trained as computer operator on unit record equipment, computer programmer on IBM 602 and IBM 1401.
1963: Left US Army and moved to Annapolis, Maryland.
1963-67: US Army Reserves - trained in chemical pathology and gas chromatography
1963-67: Programming for electromagnetic spectrum analysis in Fortran on a UNIVAC 1107.
1963: Moved to Severna Park, Maryland.
1968: Programming in Cobol and RPG on an IBM 360 at ARINC.
1969: Programming automated medical laboratory data capture in Fortran on an IBM 1130.
1970: Developed GPSS models for Singer Corporation
1970: Converted an IBM unit record equipment shop to an IBM System/3 operation for Duron Paint.
1971: Programming retail transaction capture in assembly language on a Singer/Friden 10.
1973-77: Programming phototypesetting applications on PDP-10 and PDP-20.
1975: Got my private pilots license, flew AA-1 Yankees and Piper Cherokees
1976: Started restoration on Series 1 Jaguar E-Type.
1978-79: For an automobile distributor, developed a computer network linking Datapoint 2200's and Texas Instruments 771's to an IBM mainframe via a Tandem.
1979: Started restoration on 1959 BMW Isetta 300.
1980-81: As a computer scientist at CSC, worked on Air Traffic Control and telemetry data monitoring for the first flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia (the STS-1 mission).
1981: Had TIA - lost pilots license.
1982: Worked at General Instrument with Sid Meier and Bill Stealey.
1983-2000: Consultant on varied projects including: Quality Assurance, Management Information Systems, Material resource planning, Shop Floor Data Collection, Word processing, Telemetry Data Processing, Membership Management, Point of sale, Electronic funds transfer.
1989: Had second TIA (Amaurosis fugax)- lost vision for a few hours. Had a Carotid endarterectomy.
1990: Started restoration of SS John W. Brown, a WWII Liberty ship.
1995: Worked in Omaha, Nebraska for a year. Restored WWII and Korean War vintage Jeeps and Dodge Weapons Carriers. Worked on USS Hazard and USS Marlin
2000: Third TIA affected vision - Scotoma - retired.
2006: Chest pains - Underwent CABG procedure at Union Memorial Hospital.
2007: Diagnosed with severe sleep apnea - treated with a CPAP machine.
2007: My 1999 Ford Windstar with 88k miles was inspected as part of the subframe corrosion recall - it was found to be beyond repair and was confiscated and crushed after Ford paid me half of the cost of replacing it.