Neil Albert:  

After Halsted I attended New York University¿s School of Engineering in the Bronx. I joined a fraternity, than subsequently quit that fraternity, since the one a had joined seemed to be over the top, juvenile, despite the fact that John Belushi was not one of its members. I lived on campus even though the campus was less than 10 miles from my parents home. I met band members (I was the drummer) at the beginning of freshman year and who are still friends to this day. The band played both fraternities and school social events, including one memorable nitecap from 2-6AM in the main dormitory- good work if you can get it, since we actually got paid a modest amount. I Continued playing acoustic guitar in folk and fingerstyle blues styles which I had begun teaching myself while still at Halsted, learning from more talented and experienced guitarists whom I met on the campus. Enjoyed some somewhat ¿heavy partying¿ in the years following my fairly short fraternity days at school. I Studied Electrical Engineering, having chosen my major in the following manner, after hearing a fairly boring description of what most mechanical engineers ended up doing in industry. (I had had a love for automobiles and automobile mechanics like many young men who grew up in Yonkers.): I asked my roommate which he thought would be a better, aero or electro? His response was ¿I¿ve found that Electroshave gives me a shave than Aeroshave.¿ The rest is history. Actually, my somewhat cavalier attitude toward this decision led me to do a number of things which fit my personality and interests, using my knowledge to retain several positions with the consumer electronics industry doing engineering development of Hi-fi equipment, specifically phonograph cartridges and stylii. My first choice would have been loudspeaker design, but the only job that came up was with Pickering & Co/Stanton Magnetics in Plainview LI. Had I been more persistent and patient in finding a job with a loudspeaker manufacturer, I might still be doing that this day. I worked for 2 more companies in this field until the early 1980¿s, since the Compact Disc what released around 1982. After approx one year of unemployment, I landed a job with I.B.M¿s research division in the of solid states physics (which I really didn¿t no a lot about) providing technical and engineering support and to some very brilliant physicists, helping to maintain their laboratory, run experiments, fabricate special silicon devices for some experiments, as well as shine their shoes. I reality, the people were some of the nicest people I had met outside of Halsted and always willing to help and explain things. It was a stroke of luck that landed me the job. A person who parked his fancy sports car near me in the garage of my apartment building, had had his car repaired by one of the employees of that IBM research facility in Westchester when that person was between jobs. My interest in cars did get me somewhere after all. Several years later someone explained to me what the term ¿networking¿ meant. Live and learn. In 1992 IBM started downsizing, so left voluntarily, taking a generous separation package (A thing of the past for IBM I now hear from my friends that remained.) I attended a non-matriculated program at Pace University in specific facet of computer p...Expand for more