bio

[Kathey Marsden <km...@sbcglobal.net>]

It seems that as part of this list you are supposed to send a bio.  Here is mine.  I hope it doesn't fall in the tooooo much information category.

I kind of took the scenic route to to software development.   Growing up in Tennessee in the 70's, I of course had no opportunities to work with computers or really even consider a career in Computer Science as  an option.   After starting  my illustrious career as  a cashier, I  found I  really enjoyed "programming" the cash registers (all hex entry, How fun!).   I went to work for the company that made the cash registers and worked in the cash register industry  for nine years before going back to school  to get a degree in CS.   My honors project was in
optical character recognition but I ended up going into SCM administration and engineering support  after school.  (The folks offering that job were located a couple of miles from my house had a keen interest in hiring me when I was 7 months pregnant).
 
I finally ended up with my first real programming job  five or six years ago working in C on the Informix Database.   For the past four years I have been working in Java  on what is now  Derby.  In the Derby project my technical focus is the Network Server, the Derby database client server solution .    I am one of the lucky ones that gets paid to work on open source software.  As a sideline,  I  do a lot of  advocating for the installed user base to make sure that existing users find their applications still work despite  all our great technical progress.  

I also like to work on the Derby developer list to help folks get started.    I might actually post some of that content to the Derby website someday if I ever get around to learning Forrest or Derby gets a Wiki.  A bit of it lives in Jira waiting for that day under DERBY-257.  If there are folks out there interested in the Derby  project, there is lots of work to do even if you don't have a database background and just want to learn. DERBY-204 is my favorite high value,  size it yourself, low risk, high learning opportunity task.  I keep waiting for someone to scoop it up.   (Sorry for the interjection of  shameless recruiting.)

I love open source software and think it provides the ultimate equal opportunity.   Not all cashiers get access to the manuals.

Kathey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_configuration_management
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexadecimal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informix
http://db.apache.org/derby