Me

My name is Gary Drake. I grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma and attended Tulsa public schools. I’m sure that I was rather out-to-lunch in high school, bobbing in a whirlpool of information overload. Some portion of that information came from teachers and administrators, but the vast majority came from fellow students. My peers seemed much more mature and sophisticated than I, and they collectively had a treasure house of experiences and knowledge to which I had never been exposed. Even today I have a certain amount of awe for many of them.

After graduating from Central High School I wandered about the campus of the University of Tulsa, impersonating a student for more than four years. The reward was an invitation from Dwight Eisenhower to come impersonate a soldier.

In the first half of my undistinguished military career I had the joy of pretending to be an aeronautical engineer, working on designs for vertical-takeoff-and-land transports, hot air balloons, and other such fun at the U.S. Army’s Transportation Research Command at Fort Eustis, Virginia.

The latter half of my U.S. Army service was spent at the Special Weapons and Ammunition Command located at Picatinny Arsenal outside of Dover, New Jersey, where I was a technical editor. In addition to the editing duties, I wrote two books and co-authored another. My masterpiece was “Operator and Organizational Repair and Maintenance of the 155 mm Atomic Artillery Shell”, in two volumes. It was a critical success, but it never seemed to sell very well.

Upon return to my civilian job at American Airlines, I was somewhat distressed to learn they had no business interest in hot air balloons or atomic bombs. But someone in Human Resources flipped a coin or two and decided to introduce me to the then-new world of computer programming and information technology. For the first time in my life I was allowed to do something that I not only enjoyed but was actually pretty good at.

After agonizing over the decision, I left the airline for an oil company where the information technology challenges were more varied and more abundant. My enthusiasm for computer and communications software and hardware technology was somewhat dampened across time by periodic Peter Principle promotions—more money, more perks, but more impediments to doing the technology job that needed doing.

After a couple of lifetimes (23 or 24 years, actually) and two tours of duty on the corporate staff, I took early retirement from Atlantic Richfield, ARCO, at the age of 48. The title of my last position was some high-sounding, intentionally-impressive blather; but according to two of our Executive Vice Presidents the title should have been either “Chief Computer Scientist” or “Guru of Weird Technology”. In any event, the retirement gave me the freedom to subsequently pick and choose a variety of interesting information technology jobs.