Bobbys Run School Frank J Logandro Performing Arts Center

The brusk version of my bio goes something like this: I've been a calculator software engineer for about 33 years, currently employed by a small visitor in Marlboro, MA, developing virtualization software for configuring and managing servers. I'm married to the sometime Elaine Poulin of Chelmsford, MA. We've been married for those same 33 years, and have no children. We are currently living in Ashland, MA, in a firm that we had built in 1986. I spend most of my spare time maintaining this firm and property :-(, simply occasionally go out and try to play some golf, or get for a motorcycle ride. Both of my parents are still live and living on Cape Cod. Some of you who attended Wayland elementary schools equally a child may recall my Dad, Walter Doucette, as your primary.

How I got here takes a little longer to explicate.

Before graduating from Wayland Loftier School, I was accustomed to be a buck at the U. Due south. Coast Baby-sit Academy in New London, CT. I entered this war machine institution less than ii weeks later our graduation solar day, with the thought that 4 years (including summers) of hard work and training would earn me a Bachelor of Science caste and an officer'due south commission (as an ensign) in the U. Southward. Declension Guard. Well, let's just say that things didn't quite piece of work out that way, and the Coast Baby-sit lost a skilful human. I resigned after i year.

Ah, the summer of '69. Woodstock. Peace, Dear, and Music. In my opinion, the best music of our lives was recorded and released betwixt 1966 and 1975. Beingness a member of the "Woodstock Generation" is a large part of how I define myself today, but at the fourth dimension, I didn't have a clue almost this revolutionary new motion going on. During high school, I had always loved music of all types, and paid close attention the AM radio playlists, pop at the fourth dimension. However, my year at the military academy kept me somewhat insulated from the counter-culture that was taking shape. When I returned to civilian life, the music of the era began to re-assert its grip on me.

Becoming a noncombatant again also meant that I was now eligible for the draft, just I was pretty sure that I didn't desire to experience the sights and sounds of Vietnam. With the Selective Service breathing downwards my neck (my draft lottery number was 88), I chop-chop found a skillful, inexpensive engineering school nearby, and was accepted for the autumn semester on short observe. It was known then every bit Lowell Technological Institute, or Lowell Tech. Today it is UMass Lowell, part of the statewide academy organization. Since I had done well in geometry and algebra in high school, I chose to major in Mathematics.

Freshman year was easy, because I had taken some of the same courses during my year at the academy. I soon discovered that Lowell Tech had a small, student-run radio station, then known as WLTI. With access to a big record library, nearly of the DJs followed the lead of WBCN in Boston, low-keyed underground FM radio borer into the undercurrents of society. I thought to myself: Hither was an opportunity to expand and refine my musical tastes, and experiment with new and unusual ways of presenting information technology to a large audience. I recollect it was my sophomore twelvemonth when I began hosting my own weekly radio testify on Saturday nights. The show ran for at least three years, and featured by and large alternative rock, American and British, sometimes fading in and out with natural sounds, space effects, or electronic instrumentals. Preparing for and broadcasting that show is one of the fondest memories I have from those years. While nevertheless an undergraduate, I was able to parlay my higher radio experience into a curt, part-time task at a commercial radio station, WLLH in Lowell, reading the news twice per hour during "J.C.'due south Golden Oldies" prove.

Also as a freshman, I met my future married woman under some very unusual circumstances. It was Jan 18, 1970, and eastern Massachusetts was experiencing a snowstorm. I was hitchhiking from Dean Junior College in Franklin, MA, back to my dormitory in Lowell. Standing on the Lowell Connector, covered in snow with pollex protruding, 2 Chelmsford high school girls took compassion on me and decided to give me a lift. It didn't affair that they were heading in the opposite management when they first saw me; they turned around and gave me a ride to my dormitory about four miles away. I started dating one of them, Idris Bricklayer, but after a couple of months, she decided that I wasn't her blazon. That'due south when Elaine Poulin grabbed me on the rebound. For the next five years, Elaine and I had an "on again, off again" relationship, but nosotros ended upwardly getting married in Chelmsford on the summer solstice in 1975. To this day, she is withal at my side.

Afterwards four years of difficult studying (and yes, difficult partying, likewise), I earned my Bachelor of Science degree. Now it'southward 1973, and just what does someone do with a degree in Mathematics? Become an insurance actuary? Even though that really didn't audio very exciting to me, I spent about six months looking for such a job, ane that would validate my called major. At the aforementioned time, I worked in a serial of low-paying odd jobs to back up myself. These included taxi driver, brusk-order cook, and ice foam human. I was known as "Big Jim" to all the kids, selling ice cream in the neighborhood streets of Natick from a modified Datsun station wagon in the summers of 1972 and 1973. I call up giving a lot of thought to radio dissemination every bit a career, and remember applying for work, without success, at a Boston-area radio station.

Finally, in February of 1974, I had had enough. The New England winters were bleeding me, and I had California on my heed. I had this grand plan to pack upward all of my belongings into a U-Haul trailer, and bulldoze out to California to establish myself at that place. I would find a pocket-size apartment, get a chore, savour the warm weather, play a lot of Frisbee, and become role of the laid-back California lifestyle. It'due south funny sometimes how fate will intervene: less than one week before my planned departure, my car was totaled in Weston at the route 30 / route 128 interchange when someone ran a red calorie-free on me. So much for California Dreamin'.

Okay, so now what? I bought some other used auto, and continued to drive a cab while living at home with my parents in Wayland. But a meaning turning point came when a college friend mentioned to me that the Academy of Lowell (the merger of Lowell Tech and Lowell State) was offering a Master of Scientific discipline degree program in Computer Engineering. He suggested that since I had the engineering background, maybe I should sign upwards for the fall semester. It was true that I enjoyed working with computers. I had my first exposure to reckoner programming at the U. S. Coast Baby-sit Academy in 1969, writing unproblematic FORTRAN programs on punched cards and submitting them in batch form to an IBM 360 running on campus. I was able to further develop my programming skills in the early 1970s as an undergraduate at Lowell Tech, writing mathematical analysis programs. This new Masters plan at Lowell focused on both hardware and software concepts.

And so I took my friend's proffer. In the fall of 1974, I moved into a minor, 1-room apartment above a pizza articulation less than one block from campus, and found a full-time job as a night janitor at Wang Laboratories in Tewksbury. The next few months of studying and work started to yield results in the jump of 1975, when I was offered a education assistant position at the school. Subsequently that jump, fifty-fifty though I was nevertheless at least one year away from completing the masters programme, I started to peddle myself to computer companies, armed with simply a B.S. in Mathematics and a piece of paper showing my computer class grades so far. GTE Sylvania in Needham was impressed enough to requite me my first full-time figurer software position in May, 1975. I was married one calendar month later (see above), and completed the masters program in 1980 by taking my remaining courses at nighttime.

That's it for near of the interesting stuff. I've been a certified computer geek ever since, and the reckoner manufacture has, for the virtually function, treated me very well. I was victimized by the technology bubble flare-up in 2001, laid off and unable to notice a job for two total years. Those were scary times, and I found myself actually considering a career change. Just in the terminate, I decided that writing lawmaking and solving logic problems was what I did best, and my career resumed in late 2003 thank you to a friend'due south job referral. I've worked at many local companies, large and small, over the past 33 years, both equally a total-fourth dimension employee and as an hourly contractor, but my best years were spent at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1982 to 1985 and 1986 to 1998. My specialties have been in embedded systems, storage, networking, and device drivers. I'm currently getting some great experience with Windows internals and Windows device drivers.

Within a couple of years, I promise to finally realize my dream of living in a warm conditions climate. By the time we all gather again for our next reunion, Elaine and I promise to exist living the good life in Florida. This does not hateful retirement, information technology but means that nosotros'll motility, settle in, and then figure out what we want to do next. Life is a journeying. Every bit on a motorbike, the ride is more important than the destination.

P.Southward., Please do non depend on communicable my attending through Classmates.com. I do non spend whatsoever time there, after creating an account for myself many years ago.

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Source: https://whs1968reunion.blogspot.com/

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