I was born in the United States, in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. I have a BS in physics and an MS in geophysics. I've taught nuclear physics courses while in the U.S. Navy, worked as a geophysicist and seismologist in the earthquake consulting business, and for the past thirty-five years have been designing and writing software for both the engineering and winery industries in a number of programming languages and on several operating systems. Toward the end of my career I worked as a software consultant to Eurocopter Germany, now known as Airbus Helicopters.