franklin beilfuss:  

"After Kensington, I went to Buffalo State, where I took my first FORTRAN programming courses. This eventually led me into the systems consulting and software engineering field, and landed me a career that would take me to various parts of the world, including Boca Raton, Florida, Washington, D.C., Kobe, Japan, Birmingham, England, and finally Dallas (Plano), Texas. I worked as a top echelon software engineer for three world-class corporations, Dunlop Tire, Electronic Data Systems (EDS - Ross Perot's company quarters.), and American Airlines, all at their corporate headquarters. I still play the piano, now on my wonderful Baldwin Grand, and try to practice daily. Not those grueling practice sessions of my teens, but more along the lines of 1hour daily, if I can. I remember performing Chopin's Military Polonaise for a dual assembly in my senior year, which capped my recital career. I got too busy after that. College, family, life. At age 21, I was diagnosed with SLE, Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, or Lupus for short. I took massive amounts of Prednisone (a steroid) to stay alive, and this eventually gave me cataracts at age 30. I had surgery, but no implants (1980 only provided hard implants, and they wouldn't put them in a 30 year old). I wandered around for 23 years with no lenses in my eyes, relying on "coke bottle" cataract glasses to see life from inside a fishbowl. I had another massive lupus flare at age 51, which caused a bleed in my brain, roughly the size of a lemon, which nearly killed me. I spent 3 weeks in ICU, my left side totally paralyzed, another month in a wheelchair, then several months on a walker and finally a cane. It took me about a ...Expand for more