After graduating from AHS, I went to NMSU -- for 10 years. I started in their music program and got two degrees -- Bachelor's and Master's in Music Theory and Composition. I'd taken electives in psychology the whole time, so I stayed another semester and a summer to get a Bachelor's in Psychology, then stayed for a Master's in Engineering Psychology. That got me a job at IBM in Boca Raton, FL, as a Human Factors Engineer in 1981, and I've been there ever since, closing in on 30 years. My 30th anniversary with them will be April Fool's Day, 2011. For a profile on psychological scientists in the private sector published in 2001, see:

Voicing Psychology at Big Blue

For fun, I've dabbled in martial arts since college, and have been with the same taekwondo club in Boca Raton since I came to Florida in 1981. Michael is a 3rd degree black belt; Patrick is a 4th, and I'm closing in on 5th degree. To see Patrick do a blindfolded jump spin hook kick through a board and Mike to do a spin hook kick speed break, check out Youtube at:

Patrick and Mike Board Breaks

Most recently, I've started working on a couple of books. Practical Speech User Interface Design just came out December 15, 2010 (see picture below), and I'm working with Jeff Sauro (from Oracle -- see www.measuringusability.com) on Practical Statistics for User Research (probably out some time in 2012).

Practical Speech User Interface Design

I remember taking part in an inter-mural FORTRAN programming competition, along with several of my closest friends from high school (Pat Steele, Jack Sprague, Randy Huddleston). They did great, but no matter what I did, I couldn't get any of my programs to run, so I just went downstairs and played pinball, and decided that whatever I did with my life, it would have nothing to do with computers.