So, uh, Dave, what, uh, do you do for a living?
Sheesh. Can't you think of any better opener than the usual yuppie money-oriented junk? Well, okay....
I'm a software engineer (but don't spout tech-talk at the innocent). I work for BAE Systems, writing, fixing, enhancing, documenting, and giving presentations about, security software. I have also worked for Liqwid Networks (on contract), Secure Software, Cryptek Secure Communications, 3Com, Template Software, Telemet America, R&K Engineering, COM-TEK Services (a tiny consultancy that had me work for MCI), Mead Data Central (now separated as LEXIS-NEXIS), and BDM (Braddock, Dunn, & McDonald), and of course my own little consulting firm, Aronson Consulting Enterprises. If you count jobs during college, there are also USTechnologies and the Mellon Institute Computer Engineering Center, plus my own tutoring business for computer classes. If you want to go even further back, my high school gave everybody chores, and I've been a cafeteria worker (service line, dishscraping, dishwasher loading & unloading, and assorted other jobs), a woodshop and ceramic shop sweeper, a maker of plaster "batts" (the little platforms that sit on pottery wheels), a supply store cashier, and a bank teller. Had enough?
Okay, okay! What about your life other than work?
Ah, that's better! Thank you! No workaholic I!
Frankly, most of my spare time is taken up by my wife, Esther Nasjleti. You know how that goes. ;-> Pleasant, but....
So tell us a little about her.
She's short, smart, cute, about six years younger than me, and works as a computer user-consultant in the federal government. Anything else you want to know, you'll have to ask her.
Short? I thought you said you liked 'em tall!
Well, yeah, for purposes of lust... but this is love. Don't puke on me now....
Anyhoo, when you're not with Esther, or at work, what do you do?
Mainly, I'm the sysop (System Operator) of a free BBS (Bulletin Board System) named Air 'n Sun (formerly TIDMADT (These Initials Don't Mean A Damn Thing)), at (703) 319-0714. It's known in Internet as either AirNSun.PCBuddy.Com or f120.n109.z1.fidonet.org, and in Fidonet (the world's first and largest BBS network) as node 1:109/120.0. Eventually, I intend to hook it into the Internet on a full-time basis (when the cost of doing so comes way down), so as to support web pages, ftp directories, and so on. For now, though, it only has echoes from Fidonet and some compatible nets, Internet email, a few Usenet newsgroups, and what files I find interesting.
What subjects does your BBS cover, and what do you do with it?
The main themes are Mensa, guns, Judaism, and medievalism, but there are several forums on other topics, and some useful utility and BBS programs and general info files, and I'll pick up (almost) any other newsgroup or echo available for donors. There are also a few "doors" (games and such), but not much; the emphasis is very much on discussion. On login, it gives you a quote, and you can download the whole file; I try to collect as many interesting quotes as I can.
The main thing I do with it, though, is participate in the discussions. I started it mainly as a way to get all the echoes I liked in one place. B-)
In the summer of 1997, I became the local Fidonet "hub star", which means I'm responsible for routing the local echoes among the local hubs, plus most of the email that comes into the local net from outside. Unfortunately, that includes email from Internet, which means tons of spam. I'd guesstimate that about 3/4 of our inbound Internet email is spam, and I have set up scripts to block most of it -- I'd guesstimate maybe 1 to 2% of the spam gets through. Because of that, I coined the slogan "Give a damn, don't spam!", and became the Fidonet Liaison of CAUCE (Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email), for which I have set up an echo called BANSPAM.
Sounds busy! What else, if anything, do you do with your life?
When I had more time (I'm even way behind on the BBS), I also played computer games. (These days, though, I haven't even finished Doom II, nor even tried Heretic, Descent, or Quake!) As you may have guessed from the stuff on my BBS, I am a member of many groups, including:
(However, I haven't had time to get to a gun range since about September 1996, and have time for very few SCA events other than the Pennsic War, the big annual "bash" near Pittsburgh in the middle of August.)
As far as other electronic forums (fora?) go, I can often be found on Fidonet echoea related to those subjects, the occasional Usenet newsgroup on them, plus news.admin.net-abuse.misc, comp.software-eng, and a few Delphi forums (which are free via the Web!), mainly Personal Law and Callahan's Saloon. I'm also in lots of affinity groups on PlanetAll, and administrate a few.
I'm also now taking some web-based training at DigitalThink, done on the cheap by beta-testing the courses. I've finished their C++ series, two thirds of their Java series, and half their HTML series, and have signed up to test the rest of those, plus stuff on Object Orientation and Client/Server Computing. Later, I intend to take their Perl course, even if it's not a beta-test. If I run out of computer classes to take, they also have things like Personal Finance and Wine Appreciation.
Why all this training all of a sudden?
Mainly the sudden finding of this great opportunity to learn the stuff in a much better way than reading a boring book, without shelling out hectobucks, especially from my own pocket. They were (and might still be!) looking for beta-testers for some courses in things I wanted to learn, and this sounded like a great way to do it, on the cheap. (In fact, it's better than cheap. The beta courses are free. The three best testers get some money, the top one gets a free non-beta course, the second and third best get large discounts, and everybody else gets a small discount. They've only announced the winners for the first two parts of the C++ series, and I won the top prize both times!) But also, I view it as sort of "emergency career repair" -- learning things that I should have learned long ago. In the last couple rounds of jobhunting, I realized I had let myself get a bit obsolete.
Like how you barely know enough HTML to put together this web page?
Oh, I know a good bit more HTML than I used here, even at first -- but I didn't want to get gaudy (notice, no @#$%^&* blinking junk!) and make it take forever to load! I'm a BIG fan of plain text (even in character art, I stick to plain ASCII, with no color or motion), and the effects used here are small enough to be worth it. Besides, HTML is pretty trivial. But yes, the fact that I had only recently begun learning HTML, and haven't done any CGI/Java/etc. in this page, is an example.
So, are you going job-hunting again soon?
I hope not! I like it here at BAE Systems so far, and layoffs look like a pretty remote possibility (that being one of the attractions). Mainly, I'm hoping to be more valuable to the company, and have a larger toolkit to choose from when writing software for myself at home. Of course, it will help greatly in case I ever do get laid off, or quit, or whatever. Just out of force of habit, though, I have kept my resume up to date and available via the Internet. (Warning: the resume has a popup, and no backlink!)
Are you responsible for content on any other web pages or other electronic forums?
Not exactly. I run a humor mailing list, which you can subscribe to near the bottom of my main page, and I'm a frequent contributor to Harris On Line, especially Knuckleheads in the News, but that's about it.
You certainly are in a lot of electronic forums. Have you ever been published in good ol'-fashioned print?
Yes, a few times. It started when I was about eight or so, and got in an article in the New York Times about the synagogue my family was in. It was unusual because we didn't have a set building, but met in the members' homes. Okay, I didn't do anything newsworthy to get into the article, but I was mentioned by name anyway, as saying the blessing over the candles or something like that. Despite a few attempts to sell stories to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, AFAIK I didn't hit print again, in any big way, until, oh, February 1994 I think it was.
I wrote an article on BBSes -- what they are and how to use them. It was originally for the The Bullet (newsletter of the Virginia Shooting Sports Association), the local Mensa newsletter (Capital M), and the newsletters of some synagogues. Each target audience got a different ending, though, which pointed out that their subject was one of the ones that could be discussed on a BBS, and gave a brief list of local BBSes that covered that topic -- including, of course, mine. B-) I also got it put in the Blue Press, the magazine/catalog of Dillon Precision Products. (They make equipment for reloading. That's when you take a used cartridge casing, and put in a new primer, new powder, and a new bullet.) That version wasn't local, though, so I included an offer that if people sent me their area codes, I'd look in my assorted lists and see what gun-related BBSes I could send them to there.
Did you get a lot of responses out of these articles?
Yes, I'd guess a few dozen new users, and a thousand inquiries, which are still trickling in! (And with some idjits still sending me their ZIP code instead of their AREA code....) For a while, I was maintaining a list of gun-related BBSes around the world, but after my erstwhile employer started sending me out of town a lot, I stopped.
Anyhoo, the Mensa version eventually became a regular column, called Roadmap to the Onramp to the Information Superhighway. Each month, I featured a different aspect of it, like networked forums, nettiquette, games, files, chat, tips for BBSing better, and so on. Again, though, my boss was sending me out of town a lot, so I stopped.
A few years later, in May 1997, I even made the cover of the Washington City Paper, for an article on, yes, you guessed it, BBSes. They covered three local BBSes, including mine, and also had a picture of me inside, wearing a Hell's Mensans t-shirt (Electronic Elite chapter, of course!) and doing "dry-fire" practice with one of my guns.
Where's Whats??? Is that a genius motorcycle gang?
No, actually, it's got nothing at all to do with motorcycles. (But remember, neither did the original Hell's Angels; they were an Army Air Corps bomber group in WWII.) It's Mensa's "party" SIG (Special Interest Group). We help people plan, set up for, run, clean up after, evaluate, etc., parties. Our slogan is, "A Hell's Mensans Party is any event at which all people involved have pleasant memories the next day." There's a roughly-quarterly newsletter called Party Smart, full of recipes, party tips, etc.
And what's "dry-fire"?
That's sort of shooting without bullets. You just aim at the target, squeeze the trigger, and follow through (which, in shooting, means keeping the gun perfectly steady). It helps build control, endurance, and so on, plus you don't need a range to do it (nor of course do you use up your ammo).
Ah. Have you hit print since then?
Yes, a few times. In August 1997, I was briefly quoted in Money Magazine (not, unfortunately, for having a lot of it) for an article about spamming. On a related note, my What's So Bad About Spam? article has been published in the Cap-M, followed by my series on protecting yourself from spam (Keeping Your Address Private, Filtering It Out, Striking Back, Other Ways to Hurt Spammers, and It's The Law... well, okay, not yet....).
Ever been paid for anything that you've gotten published?
Not quite yet, but in January and June 2000, Planet Relish published some of my Feghoots, specifically Funeral for a Feghoot. They pay $5 a pop.
What else do you do in so-called Real Life?
Offline, I also go to lots of Mensa events, the occasional SCA event, and the very occasional "housefilk" -- if you need an explanation of that, see the newsgroup rec.music.filk (where I hang out sometimes, but newsgroups are a very low priority for me). I can't sing worth a damn, but neither can most filkers. B-) I do play guitar (mostly acoustic), and write lots of parodies, and the occasional original. Some of them are available on my web page about filk and in file area FILK on my BBS. Feel free to perform any of them, so long as you give proper credit and don't try to make money off it (otherwise we must negotiate a cut first).
You mentioned getting mentioned in the New York Times when you were a kid. Just what are your roots?
To go back to the very beginning, I was born in 1963, and raised in northeast Philadelphia in a fairly typical middle-class reform-Jewish family, with one older brother. (He used to insist on being called by his middle name, Joe, and in his late teens, started insisting on being called by his real first name, Solomon. Go figure! I still call him Joe... partly from habit and partly to bug him.) My dad (Marvin) rose through the ranks to become the city's Chief Medical Examiner, and my mom (Gail) was a dietitian at Friends Hospital, a local mental hospital. (They're both retired now, but Dad still occasionally gives expert testimony, plus flight qualification physicals to private pilots, and teaches C, C++, and Assembler, part-time at Bucks County Community College and Holy Family College. He also used to teach ground-school part-time.)
So where did you go to school?
First, I went to the nearby public schools, but the teachers went on strike a lot, and the schools just weren't very good, so the folks put me in private schools. First there was Friends Central, but that was way across town, so then Newtown Friends, but that only went up to 8th grade, so finally The George School. These were all Quaker schools, which I highly recommend. (They believe strongly in a good education, and don't shove the religion down your throat.) I wound up going to college at Carnegie-Mellon University (Pittsburgh PA) as an Electrical Engineering major, and switched to Computer Science -- actually Applied Math, CS track, since the only actual CS degree they had at the time was the "Piled higher and Deeper". However, I dropped out in the middle of my junior year; my grades were rotten due to competing with people who had been programming professionally for years, while I was new! My folks then dictated that I go to the nearest place with a CS curriculum, which was Beaver College (Glenside PA), where I was bored stiff, and graduated with department honors. I've contemplated going to grad school, but decided against it at first, never got around to it afterward, and now figure I probably won't bother. I have, however, continued to take the occasional single course.
What else did you do in your early days?
Outside of the school year, I went to camp most summers, but didn't really find one I liked until Echo Hill, in Worton MD, right across the Chesapeake Bay from Aberdeen Proving Grounds. Odd location, that, for a Quaker camp! Also odd is that it was also where I learned most of my archery (which I am considering getting back into for SCA purposes), and the basics of riflery (.22s, at fifty feet), earning the NRA level of Sharpshooter. It wasn't all violent, though; I also learned to sail and water-ski there. At some camps, I also did a bit of horseback riding, which I've meant to get back into somewhat, but it's so expensive....
At various times, I also collected coins (still have some), stamps (gave them to my cousin Gary at 13), and comic books (actually mainly in college and just past; still have most). Watched a lot of TV. Read a lot of books, mostly science fiction.
What are some of your favorites, like color, movie, quote, TV show, etc.?
Where else have you visited or lived?
I've also managed to visit assorted Caribbean islands (I was very young at the time so I don't remember much), Canada several times (including an 8th grade exchange trip to rural Quebec, where they don't speak English), England, France (senior year exchange trip to the small Alsatian city of Guebwiller, plus Paris), and Israel (I was bar-mitzvah'ed at the Western Wall, albeit at age 18), with brief side trips into Germany, Switzerland, Lebanon, and Egypt. I also lived for several months in Roanoke VA -- lots of great cheap restaurants! B=) Aside from the stint in RoanokeA, I've lived in the Virginia suburbs of Washington DC since 1985, living in McLean, Reston, Alexandria, and now Vienna, where I think I'll stay for a while.
Have you been into guns ever since Echo Hill?
Not at all! Of course, my parents wouldn't let me have one, being a typical suburban family. The next involvement was when I read some debates about gun control in some Fidonet echoes, researched the issue further, came to the conclusion that gun control (at least, beyond laws against possession by felons, nutcases, and other folks who have already proven themselves to be a public danger) is Just Plain Wrong, and joined the debates. I didn't lay hands on one again until I was about 28 or so, when a friend invited me out to a range, to learn to shoot his pistols. Actually buying one was a few years later, and a bit of a long story. A local sysop who had a lot of gun stuff on his BBS, died (of natural causes). His users were looking for a new home on a BBS willing and able to carry the Fidonet gun echoes. I wanted to know more about guns, so I picked up the users and the echoes. One of them, Paul, gave me a ride to a gun show. I intended to just check it out, but of course I couldn't pass up those great deals, and what with all the gun control laws coming down the pike, I decided to get one, starting small with a .22 target pistol.
Just how many guns do you have now?
To put it bluntly, none of your business. Let's just say it's in the single digits, and includes at least a shotgun, a handgun, and a rifle, and nothing that is even close to illegal. In this country. Yet.
Does owning guns mean you consider yourself right-wing?
Absolutely not. The entire concept of "left versus right" politics is much too limiting. Liberals are on the left, and conservatives on the right... while people like me (i.e., those who bother to think for ourselves!) are up and forward! A pox on both the Demublicans and the Repocrats; there's no real difference between those two camps of statists. I'm a libertarian -- the only bunch that wants to protect all our rights! (Yes, not just mine, but yours too.)
So you have some left-wing stances as well? Can you give us an example?
Certainly. Mainly, the entire War on Drugs has been not only a failure, but downright counterproductive. It drives drugs underground where they can't be taxed and regulated, as opposed to the legal drugs such as tobacco, alcohol, and caffeine. It has meant enormous profits for criminals, therefore inviting turf wars, corruption, theft by addicts to support their habits, and product dilution, which leads to uncertain purity and thus to overdoses. Instead of spending billions of dollars to combat drugs, we could legalize, regulate, and tax them, instead making billions of dollars. It would also make us better able to protect our children (through fear of losing dealer licenses), and help wean addicts off it (by removing fear of arrest). Even with massive taxes, the price would drop like a rock, and therefore so would the petty theft the remaining addicts would need to perform in order to support their habits. If politicians learned anything from Prohibition, we wouldn't be in this mess. Worse than all that, though, the War on Drugs has been used as an excuse to violate the civil rights of innocent Americans. The DEA has repeatedly gotten away with quite literal murder, busting in, guns blazing, on perfectly innocent people. Who do they think they are, the BATF? B-)/2
Hmmmm. So where do you stand on, say, abortion?
Actually, that's one fight I prefer to stay out of. You see, it's all based on a completely subjective and unprovable question: when does the fetus become a "person", such that its right to live outweighs whatever right(s) the mother is exercising? Both extreme stances, and many more between, are perfectly logical conclusions from their supporters' axioms. For example, if you believe that life begins at conception, it follows logically that abortion is cold-blooded murder of the most innocent of all human life. On the other claw, if you believe that life starts at birth, it follows logically that abortion is nothing more than the removal of an unwanted growth that, if let go, will become extremely inconvenient, expensive, and dangerous. Then there's the view that, since the Torah says that the soul enters with the first breath, a fetus can't even be considered a potential person, even minus a soul yet, until its lungs have developed. There are many many more views, and they will never all agree. You probably won't ever even get a majority to agree on any compromise. So, if pressed for a position, I default to honoring the rights of the party we know to be a living, breathing, human being.
On the other claw, that doesn't mean I support having our tax dollars pay for it! Morally, I oppose that, though pragmatically, it's a hell of a lot better investment than feeding yet another generation of welfare sponges.... B-(
Well, we're just about out of time, Dave; is there anything else you'd like to tell our audience?
Yes. If you have any more questions you'd like included in this "interview", email me.