I was born in New York City, a baby-boomer. My father had just played his part in the War. All I remember as a child was throwing things off our balcony and watching them hit the pavement. My mother tells me I never hit anybody. At least with nothing hard.

I grew up in Brooklyn and attended a "private" school in Bay Ridge. We had a small class and a lot of inspiring teachers, like Mr. May and Mr. Hayden. I graduated the year the Verrazano Bridge was built and became an Electrical Engineering major at a certain Ivy school in New Jersey. They had a great basketball team when I was there.

I had this "thing" for gadgets and I wanted to see how they ticked. I figured that was the best way to learn business skills. Made sense to me.

College was great for me...I partied a lot and studied sometimes, but was caught up in the "movement" and decided that I could contribute more to the human race as a doctor, so I switched my major. My grades went down hill fast, but I did get accepted for medical school at a certain Tobacco Road institution. Of course, their basketball team sucked when I was there.

Medical School was fun for me; I gained thirty pounds the first year because I always ate while I studied, and I was always studying. I took it all off again with my summer job teaching tennis in the Catskills. I figured that would be good experience for a budding physician. When it came time to pick a specialty, I decided to become a pathologist because all the internists and surgeons I knew were too busy to play golf. My first autopsy nearly changed my mind.

When I finished my residency, the Dean convinced me to go to the NIH to do research, so I did. A lot of rodents gave their lives to further my cause, but I did publish some great stuff. I also travelled a lot for the Government doing inspections and learned a lot of neat administrative things. Like reading balance sheets and administering contracts.

After NIH, I realized I had no useful skills at all, especially since I hadn't looked at a glass slide for years. I decided I hadn't spent enough time in graduate school, so I went back to Tobacco Road to get a Master's in Health Administation. It made sense to me. Now that I was a half-baked manager, I figured if I couldn't beat 'em, I'd join 'em.

Graduate school was fun. I was the oldest student in the class. I partied a lot and studied a lot less than medical school. Didn't gain any weight. When I finished, I headed to Memphis for my first hospital administration job.

Six years later, I had a lot of management skills in my repertoire, but I realized that no one called me "doctor" any more, so I decided to do another pathology residency and look for a real job.

Of course, by now no one wanted to hire me for anything because it was obvious I had no clue about what I wanted to do - so, of course, I joined the military, where I immediately became a pathology practitioner, and was appointed department chairman, and hospital deputy commander. The military, surely, knew what they were doing. I knew all that training had not gone to waste.

After nearly ten years of marching in formation, sitting in closed tents with live tear gas, one wartime deployment, and a lot of overnight "field exercises," and, oh yes, some pathology, I got a big promotion and was transfered to the military's medical school, to share my knowledge with bright, young, impressionable military physicians-in-training.

Somehow, along the way, I had become a self-proclaimed Jedi master, computer aficionado and medical informatic's guru. Never mind how.