Doug Ferguson:  

I’m either in the end of the last third of my life or the end of the third fourth of my life. It’s a long story, but the short version follows. My life as I know it now consists of three parts; school, work, marriage. It’s also divided amongst states; New York, Texas, and Louisiana. My time in New York and Texas is approximately equal almost to the day. If there is to be a fourth, I’m not yet aware of what that is. I should also note that although I chose to divide the first three into school, work, and marriage there is overlap; for example I worked for my father while going to school, I attended graduate classes while working and I continued to work while married. So if there is a fourth period I would assume I’ll continue to be married while living where? The first is self-explanatory (and you were there also) birth, grade school, high school, and college all took place in New York State. The second; therein lies a tail between two cities. After graduation I was lucky enough to get a chance to go to space, or rather I spent the first quarter of my second third working at Johnson Space Center, in Houston for Lockheed and then a subsidiary Lockheed/EMSCO. The period was during the early Shuttle missions in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL). We supported testing for the early shuttle missions thru a collection of software/hardware simulators and emulators. During missions, we recorded live PCM data which could be replayed to help diagnose and resolve problems. I worked my first and only 36 hour shift during one of the mission critical events. During this period I also met the son of one of the astronauts you may know as Lord British. Sadly (for me) I never made it to space. I was however involved in a project for Lord British and Sierra On-line to convert Ultima from the Apple to the Atari. Four of us (Danny, Mark, Clyde, and I) formed a company (Sigma Micro Systems) to accomplish this task; unfortunately work and overtime scaled up at the same time. We completed the game albeit a little later than originally promised. Things were changing; my supervisor was retiring and the JSC contracts were going up for rebid as a sole site contract. Lockheed had recently won the KSC site contract and there was little or no chance they would also be awarded the site contract for JSC. About that time I received an offer for another job in Garland working for E-Systems which was later purchased by Raytheon. I spent the next seventeen years of my life working there. During that time I also did some travelling (both business and private) around the United States (crossed a few rivers and hiked back to waterfalls that not everyone gets a chance to see). Not much to say about my time there due to the classification level. I was a software developer developing control process applications, algorithms - initially sequential followed later by massively parallel across DSPs and or processors. Later as microprocessors became faster, similar algorithms and capabilities moved to SGI workstations and servers. SGI initially couldn’t compete from a bandwidth perspective but they were easier to maintain and adapt. Addendum: My first puppy was born in the red room in Las Vegas, Nevada. I helped bring him and his brothers and sisters into the world while visiting a friend. She gave him to me as a Christmas present that same year. A few months later I purchased a female to keep him company while I was at work. You can learn a lot from a puppy about yourself and the people around you. This was also the time of rock concerts, fast cars, and racing. Music was I big part of the first two thirds but has diminished during the third. Towards the end of this p...Expand for more