I have a sister, Lauren, who is a director of nursing at the Medical College of Virginia. This may be possibly the most insane job in the universe. Check out when she is on call and I will guarantee disaster will strike - a tornado goes through a K-Mart, two hurricanes, the worst snow storm in thirty years, 9/11,...She has a Ph.D. in nursing and sometimes teaches classes. Her real passion is shopping.

   I was raised in Richmond, attended college in Norfolk and spent the next fourteen
years living in Northern Virginia (aka NoVa - Fredericksburg, Woodbridge, and Vienna).

  My family has lived in Virginia since 1655. One of my ancestors (John Roberts) was a young hero of the American Revolution and spent most of his adult life in state politics where he was a political ally of James Madison. He abandoned this life at 55 to marry a nineteen year old girl and have eight children. Another was a builder who designed and built Oak Hill- the home of President James Monroe and was married to a young lady named Sally Hyde - as in the park in London. There was even a Goodloe who died in a duel. If you look near the lovely town of Gordonsville Va. you will find Goodloe's Mountain . It belonged to my great grandfather, but we lost it in some depression in the 1890's. Mostly we farmed the land in the beautiful foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. A more accurate description is that we were poor farmers.

   I have been a rabid Dallas Cowboys fan almost all my life. (Sadly many of my fellow students come from backward places such as Europe and call soccer football.. A fine game for young children as is hide and seek. Now the English did invent Rugby an even more manly game than our football. Something they should show more pride in. Please don't mention The Ice Bowl or The Catch around me. On the other hand, Thanksgiving day 1974, the wildcard game against the Vikings in 75, Tony Dorset's  991/2 yard run on that Monday night game, Bob Lilly, Larry Allen or how about Emmitt playing that game against the Giants with his shoulder out of the socket!! These  will get a more positive reaction.  As an old fan, Tom Landry is greatly missed - it was  the man in the hat who gave the organization class. As far as I am concerned  he is still The Coach. Catch the new statue of him outside of gate one at Texas Stadium. We will also miss Tex who passed away this summer. He will be honored by induction into the Ring of Honor this fall. With the arrival of THE TUNA this fall things look like they are going to turn around. It's sad to no longer see the triplets, but I think some of the young guys are stepping up this year.My favorite young player is Roy Williams. Not since Ronnie Lott has someone hit his opponent so hard.

  I attended college at Old Dominion University in Norfolk Virginia. We are
best known for our women's basketball team.Even though its been fifteen years since graduation I still look back fondly on the experience and still keep in touch with some my old roomies - James Davidson and Steve Sadler.

  While working I attended George Mason University at night where I studied mathematics. I owe a lot to my old adviser Philippe Loustaunau and Brian Lawrence. Philippe is an expert on Grobner Basis and other areas of Computer Algebra. He now works in Industry and teaches part-time at GWU in DC. Brian taught me something like six classes in various areas of logic and complexity theory. He is a Set-Theoretic Topologist by trade. When it comes to box spaces he's the man.

Work History

I worked for fifteen years before coming to Penn in 1999. My first job was at a small company in Dahlgren Virginia. Dahlgren is located about 45min East of Fredericksburg Va. Dahlgren was the home of the first Navy computers in the early 1950s. The computer scientist David Gries also had his first job in Dahlgren. I worked on analyzing software on Aegis class ships.

My second job was for Sperry/Unisys/Paramax in Quantico Virginia. I wrote war games for the US Marine Corps. Personally I loved working with the aviators. They are the best I have ever met at stating requirements. I hung out with some really cool historians. Bruce Gudmundsson (author of Stormtroop Tactics, On Artillery, On Infantry, and the soon to appear On Armor) and Bradley Meyer. Brad knows more about the operational arts of war than anyone else I know.

I spent three years at a company called Research Analysis and Maintenance where I worked as a developer, DBA, and SA for the US Army's transportation command. My big claim to fame there was doing a massive system upgrade where we did a big DB and OS upgrade and I headed the s/w porting effort in addition to all the systems s/w. My buddies Garry (S/A) and Dave (Communications and fellow Cowboys fan) and I worked hand and glove on this effort. Sadly Dave passed away a few years ago. He has been terribly missed.

My last three years in industry was spent working for a company called American Computer Technology as a consultant to the Employment Service Agency(ESA) which is part of the Department of Labor(DOL). ESA performs a number of activities, but it mainly acts as the insurance company for government employees who are injured on the job. They have a great team of government folks - Jim, Steve, Theresa and recently Kebo as well as a great team of contractors like Rick, and my buddy Bob. Yes all of Bob's stories are TRUE.

Why Go To Graduate School
Sometimes I'm  not sure myself, but I was mostly driven by the poor quality of software. There are many reasons for this. Mostly the customers don't care so why should the folks that produce it. See the research section for more details on this.

An alternative reason is that I got to the point that my life was Bisimilar to Wally.

I left industry at the height of the boom (1999) and yet I had the feeling that things weren't going to stay that good for long. I was right! Not only have the dot-coms gone bust, but the telecoms have also gone bust. To make matters worse much of the industry is undergoing structural shifts that are as profound as those in the textile industry. As companies are under more and more pressure to cut labor costs we see that the easy solution for CIOs is to move the software development offshore. Some VC companies won't give a startup their second round of funding unless they agree to do the software development and engineering offshore. There is the also degrading trend of developers being told to "train" their replacements -- it's happened to friends and they aren't happy. As Software Development magazine so eloquently put it -- Chicken Little was Right! Silicon Valley CEOs see the valley (actually the US as a whole) as becoming a place where some research is done, the ideas are generated, and the finance done. Yet most of the engineering will be done wherever engineers can be found to work for the least money (just like the textile workers). The field is already in a deflation mode.The best article I have seen on the future of engineering can be found here. That's not to say that the CS, math, or EE degree is useless. It's just that you probably won't be working in those areas, but insted will to go get an MBA, JD, or PhD. The later is what I did. I think a PhD from a top Ivy League University will position me to survive in this cut-throat environment. I'm guessing that we are all bright enough to survive this upheaval.

 
               
 The Good the Bad about Graduate School
     
   This little section is for those who might be thinking about returning to school after more than ten years in industry. If you are under say thirty, then ignore this.

     Assuming that you are competent you will now be making more than enough money and that will be gone.You will live like you did when you were first out of school, but it won't seem as fun this time around. On the other hand, you have almost no spare time and will get to pursue  things you enjoy for the most part. If your interest is in more theoretical aspects of computing, then you NEVER got to work on this kind of thing in industry.

      Much worse than having no money is going from a position of responsibility (where I was often at the table when decisions that affected me were made) to back to being treated like a twenty something. That sucks.

      Professors just don't get Dilbert as virtually no one has had a  non-research  (academia, R&D lab) job. It often leaves them sounding a lot like the pointy-haired boss and yet they don't know it. Carl worked in industry for a while the other year and doesn't make this mistake
 
       In the mathematical sciences virtually all the grad students start at twenty-one. They don't get Dilbert either. In fact, they don't get life.  Hell, one really cool and smart buddy recently didn't know what the Moon Landings were. I started programming in 1976, before most of these kids were born - before many of the faculty here knew what a computer was - I often have a "been there done that" attitude. Here's another funny story. A few years ago I was in a buddy's office and what did I see when I looked up - an old fashioned disk platter. He thought it was a metal Frisbee. When I told him what it was he said -- do you think it was leftover from ENIAC. When some twenty-three year old is explaining what will dominate the computing world for the next thirty years. Close your eyes and replace whatever they are saying with  Fifth-Generation - and you know you have been there heard that!  Hell, we have new twenty-seven year old faculty, they don't know what the moon landings were either:-)

Something that's really annoying. Every March every MALE in the country undergoes a hormone change known as March Madness. Here I can't even find a pool to play. I mean someone (and I'm not naming names here Pam) had me all fired up to put my whole retirement savings on Arizona to run the table one year. Well maybe it was best that I couldn't find a pool to play at that moment. But get real - during those few weeks every conversation SHOULD start off with something like -- Kansas vs Kentucky tonight! But NOT HERE. What's up with that. It has really annoyed me the last few years. I mean that's just WRONG. Isn't there some government agency charged with investigating this sort of thing.
 
   There are lots of good things.  You don't have to wear a tie (and I have ninety-five of them) to work every day. You can work out of your home some days of the week. The most important fact is that the work is so much more interesting. Just go back and look at the links to our research. Doesn't that sound so much cooler than DB queries, Java hacking, ... I can't tell you how much difference that makes in life. In fact it makes it worth putting up with all the other stuff. Well maybe not the lack of a pool come March :-)

In spite of driving me insane by sounding like the twenty somethings that they are, I really like almost all of my fellow students and faculty. When I came here the senior guys in our group - Karthik, Davor and Pankaj, made this ole guy feel at home. They are all off now doing really cool things. Vladimir Gapov and Michael Levin who are both students of Benjamin Pierce. Benjamin has also had a great collection of Post Docs such as Alain Schmitt. My friend Swarat, who is a student of Rajeev Alur, also does really cool things in model checking.

Interests and Passions outside of Computing

History
 
    Art History. I used to take classes at the Smithsonian when I lived in DC.

    Military History.

Like most of my old friends I have a passion for modern Naval battles. I mean what's more manly than BATTLESHIPS. If you wonder if you fall in this category ask yourself how many months/years of your life have been spent obsessing over the battle of Jutland. Here's a question -- what was the problem with the British cruisers that day? Did they learn this lesson before they sent the Hood out to take on the Bismark. Another question. What would you have done different from Admiral Callaghan during the naval battle off Guadalcanal on November on 1942. In case you don't remember. That engagement lasted for approximately 24min and cost us over a thousand sailors, but the operational goal was achieved. Here in Philly we have several Battleships - The Olympia and across the river - The New Jersey. Guys take a look at the New Jersey. Look at how she sits in the water. Those beautiful 19 inch guns that can throw a shell over twenty miles. Did you know they had Aiken's analog computers on board. She has 24 inch armor on her turrets. While those guys that maintain her as a museum are wonderful - I mean they are the best (most of them had served on her in WWII or Korea), there is just something undignified in such a beautiful lady undergoing such a fate. Those guns should be firing!!!

    I also like English History from the Conquest through the reign of Queen Anne.
 

   Early American history is a passion. Especially colonial Virginia History. As you can see above, my family played a role in several events and interacted with many historical figures from that time.

Music  Mostly classical. The past few years I have become interested in early music- that's music before Bach to those who think of the Rolling Stones as early music. I also like Jazz a lot.

Theater  I have developed a great love of classical theater when living in Washington DC where Arena Stage and above all Michael Kahn's Shakespeare Theater provided numerous evenings of pleasure. Next to the Royal Shakespeare Company(RSC) the Shakespeare Theater may be the best permanent company around.   There is also the Folger Library where Shakespeare is also performed.

Fine Restaurants  The one thing I have developed as a well paid consultant in the software industry was a love for fine dining. I'm too poor these days. My favorite restaurant is Galileo in Washington DC.

Cooking Since I can't afford to eat fine food out, I cook it at home. I like cooking seafood and game. I love making risotto and stuffed pastas. 
Above all else I like working with chocolate. I just wish I had more time to spend on this stuff.