I combine two characteristics that are normally associated with together. My first degree was in Technical Journalism at Oregon State University where I then worked for a small weekly then a small daily newspaper as a reporter. Great experiences in college where my senior year I was sports editor of the Daily Barometer. And facing daily deadlines and interaction with people to conduct interviews then write reports every day was a challenge and a growing experience.But I felt I needed something different so I went to back to college and got my second degree in Computer Science from Portland State University.Combining journalism and computer science, I was hired on at Electro Scientific Industries as a technical writer. After a 5 years of writing about software and laser systems I switched over and wrote software for ESI's laser processing systems for 11-1/2 years. I then decided I want more direct interaction with customers and became an applications engineer for ESI. I worked with our customers domestically and in Europe and Asia, diagnosing system problems, developing software for them and making sure their systems were working as desired. I also created and gave training classes.Specialties: I have programmed in C, C++, shell scripts on Unix and Linux platforms.When I taught classes for our laser systems, I created PowerPoint presentations.