Let's see. In grade school, I wanted to be a train engineer on a passenger train (that, after taking a train trip in 3rd grade). In early junior high, I thought driving a Greyhound bus would be so cool (that, after taking a long bus trip to a Boy Scout Jamboree).

In early high school, I determined that designing cars would be really cool (that, after getting an insider's tour of the then International Harvester plant in Ft. Wayne, Indiana).

At the end of high school, after taking mechanical drafting my senior year to fill up the school day (I only needed to take one English course to graduate, but they insisted that five periods of Study Hall was not acceptable), I decided I wanted to be a draftsman, or even better, an architect. The only architecture school in the state was full and had a waiting list, so I went into "something to do with computers".

I ended up graduating college with a Computer Science degree plus about 16 credit hours short of an Electrical Engineering degree.

Since graduating, I've continuously been in the computer software/design field. Spent time with intelligent controls, factory automation, good ol' cubicle work on client/server systems, and now I'm back into low-level hardware control and specialized real-time programming in "Intelligent Traffic Systems" (a fancy word for tolling systems).

I love what I do now. It's exciting and fascinating to be able to write software that controls RF equipment to read toll tags, controls toll collection devices, controls violation enforcement cameras and controls systems that gather information from in-road sensors that can determine the speed, length, axle spacing, presence or absence of dual wheels of a passing vehicle at speeds in excess of 160 mph (we've tested it to that level).

What's cool is that so many people interface with my work products on a daily basis, directly or indirectly. If you're ever on a toll road in Austin, Miami or Denver, be sure to wave at the pretty cameras.