CompuServe Messages

Well, my employer does prefer me to use the company account for company business, but there is a more important reason I won't be here under my personal account. That's because it will be _my_ _personal_ account, and I will use it for _my_ _personal_ benefit. As much as I like 3DS, it's my job, not my hobby. I will instead use my personal account for things like Comics, SF, etc., as those are among my hobbies. I'll only call in on my personal account from my home computer, which does _not_ have 3DS installed. When I get home from a long day at work, the _last_ thing I wanna think about is 3D Studio or any other product that we use at work to do our jobs. Home time is _my_ time! <g> My employer has been convinced to allow me to sign my messages as it is the new policy. Therefore, it's time to introduce myself here publically: My name is Joel Rea and I have been involved in computers since the late 1970s, having cut my teeth on a DEC PDP-8/e at age 16 while at college. Having discovered that, I changed my major from Pre-Med to Computer Science. In the early 1980s I helped program two then cutting edge graphic adventure games for the Apple ][+ (later ported to the IBM PC, Commodore 64, and Macintosh) called "The Quest" and "Ring Quest" (both originally published by Polarware/Penguin, and the latter later published by Origin Systems). My primary contributions to them were in designing a text-compaction scheme and the semi-intelligent English command parser. I later spent several years as the senior (and for quite some time the sole) technical support person at Softdisk Publishing, pioneer of disk magazines. That involved knowing all major personal computer operating systems and hardware, _and_ all conceivable problems of every program Softdisk ever published (and they did an average of ten programs per issue, one issue per month each for the Apple // family, Macintosh, IBM PC, and Commodore 64, plus a quarterly for the Commodore 128, plus specialty magazines for PC advanced games [ID Software got their start working for Softdisk on this project, called The Gamer's Edge], Mac desktop publishing, PC business apps, etc. — and I had to know them _all_ off the top of my head! All the way back to Softdisk #1 published in September 1981!). Earlier I had worked with my current employer, Marion Marks, at a computer dealership named Computer S.O.S., where my main job was custom programming for our customers. He remembered me when he decided to form a computer animation firm and invited me to work with him and I jumped at the chance, and here we are. In addition to computers (all aspects, not just animation) and comics and SF and fantasy, etc., my interests include music (especially MIDI), religion, politics, etc. (Come to think of it, those last two may explain why I've come across as somewhat opinionated around here… <grin>) — Joel Rea @ M&M Communications Concepts.