Dennis Moreau:
CLASS OF 1975
Opelousas High SchoolClass of 1975
Opelousas, LA
Opelousas Catholic High SchoolClass of 1988
Opelousas, LA
Amy Bradford Ware High SchoolClass of 1975
Opelousas, LA
Leonville Elementary SchoolClass of 1971
Leonville, LA
Little Flower AcademyClass of 1971
Arnaudville, LA
Dennis's Story
Life:
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I was born and grew up in southwest Louisiana. I built my first computer (actually a sequence controlled accumulator) and wrote my first computer program in the eigth grade (1970 ish), at the enthusiastic urging of Sister Mary Nell (Little Flower School, Arnaudville, LA) ... since then, programming, building, thinking and writing about computers has generally been my refuge from the real world, as my wonderful wife and all of my friends will readily attest!
School:
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My family moved a lot, so I didn't really feel that I "belonged" in the schools that I attended. Then again, who really gets through high school feeling completely secure and integrated into their respective peer groups? ;)
In retrospect, it still seems that feeling more a part of the community would have been nice.... but I am who I am, because of my experiences... so...
College:
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I started college way before I had either the discipline or desire to do serious coursework. I guess high school was just too easy and real computers far too seductive.... I was totally NOT ready to work on a degree...
After a false start in EE, I worked for a while at a number of jobs. I spent some time offshore and in entry level programming positions. Eventually, I got motivated, discovered self confidence and focused my interests with the help of the world's best teacher, mentor, advisor, role model and my best friend for ages Dr. Wayne D. Dominick.
That made all the difference... I finished my BS, Cum Laude and completed my subsequent masters and doctoral work in three years under NASA/JPL sponsorship.
Note to Self: I need to remember not to push Alexander too hard to attack things on arbitrary and aggressive timelines. After all, if he isn't solving Putnam problems or stiff systems of PDEs in his head by 5th grade, what's the real harm??!? ;)
(he can always learn conjugate gradient techniques in junior high;)
Workplace:
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My family's motto is "If you can walk, you can work; If you can drive you can work more jobs". My paternal grandmother's advice to me was to "Never be afraid of work." and she re-iterated that ethic, by example throughout her entire life.
My first real job was installing burglar alarms, in the 9th grade, for J and J alarms in Opelousas.
I also drove "hot shot" for National Supply Co., gotta love those oilfeild board roads!
I worked offshore most summers and learned how to cook (for 400 people) on West Delta 75, GI Block 16, Exxon DB1, and the Earnie Miller (derrick tender).
I "doodle-bugged" for seismic and exploration companies and learned how to makeup really big electronic cables (for monitoring explosives detonations). Nothing like stacking a few miles of cable on a barge, in the middle of the swamps, by hand! Cleared up any hesitation I had about finishing college!
I did a lot of programming for Lou Ana Foods, Ed Roy's Ltd, NASA, Baylor College of Medicine, and about a hundred consulting clients.
I truly enjoyed being a professor of computer science (UL) and computational science (BCM). I liked teaching Grad School and upper level Undergrads the most. I'll do more teaching some day... when I can afford the massive salary reduction or when I can both teach and direct product research.
Most recently, I've cultivated my talent for complex software design/product strategy. And no-one has a better, more capable team of developers than I do. I love moving "bleeding edge" research and hardcore theory into realworld products that blow away the universally less well thought out competition.
In the future, I really want to spend some serious time on the terrifically hard and not so profitable problems in very large dataset visualization and analysis. That, and spend more time exploring mountains, islands and rugged coastal terrain, with Cindy and Alex. After all, with high speed internet, I can live just about anywhere!
Places I'd love to visit again:
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Banff: top of Allenby Pass on horses; Victoria, BC; Paris: especially Chartre
Switzerland: the Eiger and Jung Frau; London; San Francisco: Pt. Reyes
Santa Fe; San Antonio; Manhattan; DC (Georgetown); Baltimore (crab royale)
Philadelphia; LA (Mt. Wilson, Cal Tech); ...Expand for more
San Diego; Seattle (Redmond)
New Orleans (Commanders, Mothers, Central Groc, NOLA's,..)
Where I have lived:
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1957 Born in Arnaudville, LA (6 lb. premie)
1957-59 Leonville, LA: Age 1-2; Three porches and cypress siding.
1959-60 Hammond, LA: Age 3; Green patio house
1960-70 Leonville, LA: Age 4-14; Back to the cypress house.
1970-75 Opelousas, LA; great house on the old Sunset Road.
1975-78 Lafayette, LA;
1977-79 Baton Rouge, LA
1979-81 Opelousas, LA
1981-93 Lafayette, LA; PepperTree near Acadiana Mall.
1993-99 Houston, TX; Lakes at Parkway.
1999-09 Monument, CO- Kings Deer
2009- Lakewood, CO
Cars I miss badly:
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.Landrover Discovery, my first 4WD
.BMW 540i 6 speed, oh so fast!
.1960 Porche 356B Super 90, a real kick at 6000 rpm.
School & Jobs:
1963-69 School: Leonville Elementary/High School 1st-6th
1970-71 School: Little Flower Convent 7th-8th
1971-72 School: Amy Bradford Ware 8th-9th
1973-75 Job: J and J Alarms, Opelousas: Burglar Alarm Technician
1972-76 Job: Bayou Bengal Products (Steak Sauce Manfacturing!)
1973-75 School: Opelousas Senior High 10th-12th Grades
1975-77 Job: Seismic Technician (marsh surveys)
1975-77 School: University of Louisiana EE and CS Major
1977-79 School: LSU CS and Math Major; Research: LSU Vet. School
1979-82 Job: Opelousas Family Skating Center: DJ and Roller Skating Instructor
1979-82 Job: LouAna Foods, Opelousas: Programmer/Analyst
1983-86 Job: Ed Roy's Ltd, Lafayette: Systems Engineer
1984- Job: Executive Systems, Inc., Lafayette: Information Systems Consultant
1984 Deg: University of Louisiana: BS in CS(Cum Laude)
1985-86 School: University of Louisiana, NASA sponsored research
1986 Deg: University of Louisiana: MS in CS (Object-Oriented Design)
1986-88 Research: Landmark Graphics Corp.: Geology Atlas
1987 Deg: University of Louisiana: Ph.D. in CS Mentor: Wayne Dominick
1987-93 Job: Faculty: University of Louisiana at Lafayette: CS Faculty/Researcher, Tenure 1993
1987-93 Research: NASA Software Science Laboratory: Co-Founder and PI
1987-93 Research: A-CIM Virtual Reality Laboratory: C0-Founder and C0-PI
1990-93 Research: LSU Remote Sensing Laboratory: Satellite Image Processing
1993-99 Job: Baylor College of Medicine, Houston: VP of IT/CTO/Researcher
1994-99 Job: Faculty: Dept. of Community Medicine
1994-99 Job: Faculty: Dept. of Computational Biology
1995-99 Research: Co-PI: Biomedical Computation and Visualization Lab
1997 Married Cynthia Petermann: brilliant, beautiful, artsy and a techno-geek to boot
1999 Alexander: 10 lbs. 12 oz. at birth; 44 lbs. at 3; 48 lbs and 46 inches at 4
1999- Job: Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, ConfigureSoft Inc., CO
2002 Learned to Ski
2003 Resolution: Learn to golf
2009 Job: Senior Technologist, EMC (acquisition) wooo hooo!
Throughout school I continued to become more fascinated with various kinds of computers and the implications of architectural differences on optimal programming strategy, usually for science based problems. Some of the systems for which I developed an affinity included:
1974 IBM 1620 Model 2 - Love those toggle switches - High School
1975 Spectra 70/61 - ASR33 - USL
1975 Honywell (H6880) Multics - God's own OS - Go PL/I!
1976 MicroData 32s; MPL
1976 DEC GT40 (PDP4) - with lightpen for Lunar Landern-
1977 PDP 8E - rah! page 0 addressing mode
1977 Honeywell level 6
1978 Data General S130 - RDOS
1978 Clary Datacomp DE600 - delay line memory!
1978 Digital Group Z80 (Phi Deck)
1978 Altair 8800 -
1978 Cromemco Z80
1979 Commodore 6502
1981 IBM PC - 2 5" Floppies 16KB and PASCAL on DOS
1982 IBM PC XT
1983 TI Data flow system - custom
1984 Pheonix Raster 256/640 Graphics Workstations
1984 Sun Systems
1985 Symbolics Lisp Machines - InterLisp
1986 IBM RT Workstation
1987 SGI IRIS Systems
1991 Ncube - Hypercube
1992 Transputers - Go Occam!
1993 Cray YMP
1995 SGI ONYX 2000 24 Procs, 16 GB RAM, 4 RE2 Pipes - serious visualization and a flight simulator to die for!
1996 Beowulf Clusters - Microway
1997 DEC 4100s, 8400s - Databases
1998 Sun Starfires - Big box (slow graphics)
1999 IBM SP2s - Big DB2 data bases (shared nothing)
Started making real money buiding utilities for Intel Boxes (heavy sigh)
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