Dan_Muller/Bio
SDxWiki

Birth: 1960 in Detroit. I was standing around in diapers to grok the whole scene, man. That Vietnam shit on TV was scary. I vaguely remember watching our men land on the moon -- my dad made sure that I watched that. I also remember standing outside watching black pillars of smoke rise from Detroit during the riots. I added the word 'curfew' to my vocabulary at that time.

Childhood: Spent it in Warren, a suburb about thirteen miles from the center of Detroit. Read a lot. Usually got hit in the head when I tried to play sports involving balls. Read a lot - science fiction, fantasy (incl. LOTR), whatever I could get hold of. Thanks to my somewhat older friend Jim Hart, I started playing board war games -- starting with Risk and Avalon Hill's Gettysburg. We designed some games of our own, too, while listening to the Beatles' White Album in his basement. I also read a lot around this time. Also listened to Led Zeppelin, I remember when we decide that the cloaked dude with the lantern on one of the album covers just had to be Gandalf. Jim taught to me to smoke cigarettes, too. Cool dude. Last I heard, he was a cop in Detroit, but I heard that a long time ago and haven't managed to find any contact info for him to see if he's still alive.

Adolescence: We moved to Switzerland in 1973. (Both my parents are Swiss-born.) Attended public school there, had to learn German (for readin', ritin', and 'rithmetic), Swiss-German (a very garbled dialect useful to communicate with the majorify of the natives of Switzerland), and French (my class was already 2.5 years into French lessons in seventh grade). Worked my ass off -- that was my pre-college training. Acquired the nickname 'Ami' (that's an open 'a', not like 'Amy' -- it's French for 'friend', but actually game about as a contraction of 'Amerikaner'). Had a great time with the young ladies, playing up the exotic foreigner aura to the hilt. Read a bit less, but did manage to re-read Tolkien at some point. Learned to ski, loved it. Decided I wanted to work be an engineer of some sort, working on some aspect of the space program. (I recently rediscovered an old book, "Careers in Aeronautics", that I actually ordered from the U.S. while in Switzerland. That's how serious I was.)

Late adolescence/young adulthood: We moved back to the States in 1978, although nowhere near my birthplace. Redding, Connecticut was my new home. Spent 1.5 years in the local high school (Joel Barlow), which was academically almost entirely pointless. But then, I wasn't concentrating much on academics at this point. Social life was a hoot, hanging out with the thespians, and smoking dope in moderation (usually). Made a few good friends. Played a few D&D games, and ran one, shortly before ...

I entered the University of CT in 1980 with the intent to get a degree in Electrical Engineering. Started running D&D games regularly, an activity which cemented some long-lasting friendships. Fell in love with computers my first year (thanks in part to the Adventure game on the IBM mainframe), and switched to a dual EE/CS degree. Worked hard, hung out with a lot of hippies - even lived in the Intentional Democratic Community for a year, just before it was shut down. (The IDC was a self-managed hippy dorm, a legacy of social experiments from the early seventies.) Did very well academically, Dean's List a few times, in the Honors Program for several years (although I didn't stick with it to the end). Started skiing again at the tail end of college. Fenced for few years, mostly foil, some sabre.

Early adulthood, aka the Time of Credit Cards: Lived near campus for a few years while working as a software engineer nearby, at Gerber Systems Inc. (defunct). Settled in with my later-to-be wife, Liz. Read a lot. Still ran a few D&D games. Tinkered with PCs (which were pretty new then) both at work and at home until all hours of the night. Introduced Liz to computers, prompting her to go back to school for a second undergrad degree in CS (right after finishing her first, in pathobiology). Ran up credit card bills, paid them back down, learned how to use 'em (or more precisely, how not to use them). Skied a bit.

Five years or so later, I got bored with my job and we moved to Massachusetts. There I worked for briefly for Prime Computer (defunct) and Digital Equipment (defunct). Worked for about seven years at Banyan Systems Inc. (essentially defunct). Got really good at what I do. Stopped playing D&D. Read a lot. Skied a fair bit. Studied Tai Chi for a couple of years. Did some basic rock climbing -- top-roping only. Played darts in the local league with some co-workers for a couple of years.

Moved to Manchester, Michigan, to be closer to my parents and one of my brothers. (The other one's in Boulder, CO.) (Did I mention that my parents moved back to Michigan while I was in college?) Shortly after I got here, my parents moved way up north, shortly after that to Arizona. Go figure. It's not my fault, I swear it. Been up here for three years now, working at Creative Solutions with the other bozos that frequent this wiki. Still really good at what I do. And amazingly, I still love doing it. I still read quite a bit. Don't play D&D at all. Hardly ski at all (although I tried to remedy that this winter, with some help from Jim Horn and others).

6' 1.5" ~180# shit brown eyes shit brown hair 'stache goatee glasses slim except for this little pot belly that's moved in and won't leave smoke like a friggin' chimney

What do I live for? To compute. And I like to play computer games. And did I mention that I like to read?

What do I drive? A ten-year-old Saturn SL2. Practical. Solid. Cheap. Plastic. Our other car's an even older Jeep Cherokee that scares people. Luckily, my wife works at home, so we don't have to drive the Jeep too often.

We have two horses, Broadway Joe and Doc Conner. Joe's been with Liz since she was sixteen. Joe is old. Joe is very old, and can't see very well. Joe's a sweetheart. Doc's a BIG middle-aged thoroughbred off the race track in Boston. Doc has only two speeds: Stop and GO. He prefers GO.

Hmm, computer games I've played that I remember:

Games that mostly got left on the shelf:

Here's the more conventional bio that I have posted on the wiki at work:

I've been at Creative Solutions since December 1998. Prior to that, I worked at Banyan Systems Incorporated in Massachusetts (now [ePresence]) for over seven years, eventually as a principal software engineer and occasional project leader. I've been working with computer software ever since my college co-op job in 1982 at Combustion Engineering. My college degree was in electrical engineering and computer science, but I've done very little hardware design work. Although on bad days I occasionally joke about leaving the software industry to raise horses, I am actually still in love with my profession, and I know hardly anything about horse breeding.

My wife Liz and I live with two horses and a cat in Manchester. (Sadly, our other cat, Sneezy, passed away in September 2001, after living with us for sixteen years.) Liz is also a software developer, currently self-employed.

Over the years I've worked on network services (both client and server code), email systems, device drivers, image processing, process monitoring, and more. Until I came to Creative, I hadn't done any serious work with database systems, but I spent my first two years here making up for that. On the CBS team, I mostly work on our database business logic layers and database access layers, focusing mainly on the framework and architecture rather than application-specific business logic. I'm also heavily involved in the overall program architecture and software development process improvement. But like any CBS team member, I'll work on anything that needs doing.