Finally getting around to introducing myself

Hi Steemit community, this Phil.

I am now what we used to refer to as a "graybeard" given that I have gray beard, and I've been cranking code since 1980. As one might imagine, a career spanning decades has permitted me to work in many domains, from rocket science to medicine to finance and many others. A common theme being the use of Object Oriented languages and development techniques, and distributed computing.

As for the non-computing bits that otherwise make me human, I am married, have been for 25 years to the same amazing woman, I have two awesome kids making their own marks on the world, and a little beagle who is my constant companion. Back in the day I had an adventurist spirit, I enjoyed skydiving and staying up late at clubs listening to alternaive bands among other things. These days life passes by a little more slower pace. I am happy when I beat my average time on the New York Times crossword, and I enjoy my monthly poker night with friends.

More recently, I was drawn to the world of blockchain development by a happenstance encounter with the one and only Nathan Hourt, aka modprobe. Nathan was kind enough to work with my colleagues and me to get us from no understanding of blockchain at all to at least a basic grasp of the concepts involved.

Naturally Graphene is the implementation I have been learning as time permits. I haven't had an opportunity yet to contribute any code to the Graphene community but I expect to do so soon. Although not code, I have made one contribution in the form of an essay which I intend to be part 1 of a series. You can check it out at:

https://objectcomputing.com/resources/publications/sett/march-2017-graphene-an-open-source-blockchain

Looking forward, I am working to stimulate interest in blockchain use in the St. Louis area, and developing a consultancy practice to support that interest. To that end, I am putting myself out there by committing to presenting a technical deep dive into the implementation of Graphene at the St. Louis C++ meetup, then a week later participating in the Blockchain Breakfast Briefing, another St. Louis event, this on aimed at local business IT business leaders. Then a week after that I'll be attending Consensus 2017.

OK, I think that about covers it. Except for a video: