Ornoth

Just a quick note to observe the 25th anniversary of both the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster… and my professional career.

The Challenger disaster is one of the few news events where I recall exactly where I was. At twenty minutes before noon on January 28 1986, I was at work.

Although I hadn’t finished my undergrad at UMaine, I had just begun working as a software engineer for the university’s parking, police, and fire departments, which were all housed in one old farmhouse on the edge of campus.

My Televideo 925 mainframe terminal was located just outside the police chief’s office, and when the news broke about the shuttle’s disintegration one minute into its flight, the chief called everyone into his office to watch the event on the television that he usually used for videotapes or presentations.

Three months earlier, in October of 1985, I had been fired from a job slinging sandwiches at 7-Eleven because I had actually read the manual on how to operate the cash registers. My buddy Mike Dow was doing database work for the parking department and brought me in to assist, since he and I had already done some volunteer work together on CSNEWS, one of the internet’s earliest information services. But the Public Safety gig was my very first paid programming job.

For that reason, the Challenger disaster is inextricably linked with the beginning of my professional programming career. A career which has now officially spanned twenty-five years.

It’s been quite a ride, but I won’t indulge in reminiscing about all the good and bad times along the way. I’ll simply say that I’ve learned a lot, developed valuable skills, had a lot of satisfying successes, made so many great friends, and had a ton of fun. It’s enough to make an unemployed guy want to go back to work!

But today isn’t about all those things. It’s really more about just taking a minute to say: Wow, twenty-five years!