A current status update from Barry Gold:

I'm still a computer programmer.   Doing a certain amount of "state-of-the-art" stuff, which results in occasionally worrying about getting in over my head.  (See _The Peter Principle_ re the tendency of people to get promoted until they reach their level of incompetence.)

Right now it's disk drivers.  Not a hard problem in itself (the interface spec for PC disks is pretty simple, especially because 90% of it is never used).  But it turns out that a lot of the hardware doesn't *really* conform to the specs. Tricky.

Still married, it's been 30 years now.  Some of you former bachelors know how good it can be.  And how complicated at times.

Still filksinging.  Lee and I will be Interfilk Guests at the Ohio Valley Filk Fest (OVFF) this year.  Lee writes some _great_ songs, I sing and play guitar moderately well.  And Lee has been publishing a filk zine for over 10 years.

We also got into Rolegaming in 1975.  Lee's roleplaying APA, _Alarums and Excursions_ is almost 25 years old.  Missed _one_ issue in all that time (we were out of the country on business and the substitute editor let things slide).

On the negative side, I had a major heart attack in 1981.  So now I exercise once or twice a day and watch my fat intake.  In spite of which I've gotten overweight again.  I was almost down to my ideal weight in 1982, now I'm about 40 lbs. over.

And two kidney stones, one in 1984, one in 1998.  *Very* painful, and the second one needed surgery.  Anyone who's had a kidney stone or gallstone knows how painful that is.  If you haven't, let me say that a vasectomy didn't even come close.  Lying on the floor instead of the examining table because I wasn't sure if I was going to throw up or pass out.

And last year I was laid off from a job for only the second time in my life.  I was working for Platinum technology, and Computer Associates bought them(*).  Sorry, we don't need your services any more.  But the severance package carried me until I got my present job, and in fact I'll end up with 13 months pay for 1999.

(*) A "friendly" takeover, meaning that they offered so much money the board would have been crazy to turn them down.  Even my miniscule stock holdings brought in nearly 10K.

For more general info, you can go to my personal page at:

http://www.thestarport.com/xeno/bdgsig.html

Oh, if you want to know about Lee's fanzines, you can visit her websites:

http://www.thestarport.com/xeno and http://www.thestarport.com/xeno/bdgsig.html

-- Barry Gold

Los Angeles, California
January, 2000