User:TerryE

IT Professional

I am a maths graduate who worked in the IT industry for over 30 years. I first learned to program at fourteen and I was competent in Fortran, PL/I and S/360 Assembler by the age of eighteen. After graduating from Cambridge and a short spell as an officer the Royal Engineers, I then joined Scientific Control Systems, then a leading UK systems house and consultancy, initially working in mathematical, defence system modelling and real-time programming. I worked up the consultancy / development hierarchy to become chief engineer and technical manager of various business units. In 1991 my company was acquired by EDS and for the next 17 years I worked within EDS moving over into its services arm where the last three posts that I held were divisional CTO jobs. EDS was itself acquired by HP in 2008 and was subsequently renamed HP Enterprise Services. In the same year I left HP and took early retirement because of ill-health (though I have since recovered).

My Interests

Though retired, I still maintain involvement in projects using (and therefore maintaining my proficiency in) current languages (including C, Lua, C++, Javascript, Perl and PHP). I have been actively involved in a range of open source projects and communities for some time, including the OpenOffice.org and VirtualBox user communities, the PHP developers community, and more recently as a core developer and committer on the NodeMCU Lua firmware project for the ESP8266/ESP32 series of IoT devices. I created this TerryE user in May 2007, in order to name my contributions to Wikipedia. I also read widely, retain an interest in mathematics, and more broader science and technology topics.

My interest in CFS/ME

I had my first bout of ME in 1988 whilst in my 30s: I was bed-ridden for over 6 months, but I gradually recovered from this over next couple of years. However, this illness left me with a general susceptibility that seemed to be triggered by any immune-system assault – such as a virus infection especially during periods of high work stress. I regularly had post-viral fatigue type relapses (every few years or so) which typically lasted for a few weeks or so, but which I could work through from home, so this didn't significantly constrain my career.

I had a severe CFS relapse in December 2007, and I was bed-bound for about 18 months with my energy levels typically at around 15-20 on the Dr. David Bell Disability Scale. Once I had been diagnosed as suffering from CFS/ME, my local GP was supportive albeit within the current NICE guidelines for CFS. However, as these guidelines state that there are no cost-effective diagnostic tests or treatment for CFS sufferers, this meant in practice that I was now on my own.

We've always eaten what could be described as a Michael Pollan-style diet, but I found by trial and error that using mineral supplements and avoiding all processed foods and additives really helped. I later dropped wheat from my diet, and found that this triggered another step improvement in my stamina. (I didn't have obvious Coeliac symptoms, though my GP subsequently ran a test which confirmed this.) This increased energy meant that I could start a sensible pacing which helped to recover the ~6kgs of muscle wastage resulting from my enforced bed-rest. For the next year or so, I varied between 40 to 50 on this ability scale. Living life 'to the half' was not full recovery, but it was better than having to lie flat in bed for 23 hours a day. By early 2010, my score suddenly rose to perhaps 80-90 over the course of about 2 weeks, and it then see-sawed up and and down to 60 on a seasonal basis, and over the next few couple of years I slowly recovered my fitness to a level comparable to my pre-illness level in 2007.

Since 2010, I've had a few bad relapses making me largely bed-bound, and typically after a viral infection, with the last being something like RSV (not Covid); it's taken me over a year to get my stamina back to the point where my walking range is 3 miles ― typical long Covid after-effects, except that I've so far manage to avoid catching this one.

List of contributions

See the standard Wiki report Special:Contributions/TerryE

My Sandbox

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