From: Simon McClenahan (peepsplat@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Jul 20 2001 - 22:18:49 MDT
I would like to introduce myself. Hopefully most of you haven't filtered my name
out from my email change debacle.
If the following reads like my resume, that's because I've cut'n'pasted stuff
from my resume.
EDUCATION : Bachelor of Science (Computer Science major) University of Melbourne
1990
BRIEF PERSONAL HISTORY :
I was born in Sydney, Australia in 1970. Both of my parent's work was in
graphic design, commercial art, book design and publishing and commercial
photography. My parents have worked for major book publishers and more recently
from their home business. I lived in Melbourne, Australia for 18 years where I
attended school, started one year of my Bachelor of Science degree at Monash
University and completed the remainder of my Bachelor degree at the University
of Melbourne.
After graduating I took a job offer to work for CSIRO Australia as part of a
support team for Australia's most powerful supercomputer site. During this
period I became very familiar with all aspects and usage of the Internet and BBS
's, both technical and social, including the newest fad at the time called the
World Wide Web. It was through email correspondence that I first met my
wife-to-be, Rachael.
Rachael was studying theater as a freshman student at the University of
Northern Iowa in the USA. We started corresponding with each other by chance by
participating in an email discussion group that talked about life in the
theater. After a while, I offered to pay for half of a return trip from the USA
to Australia so that we could meet in person. She accepted, and we fell in love
during her stay in Australia for three months. We decided that we wanted to
marry, and I would immigrate to the USA. I successfully applied for a K1 fiancé'
s visa, which implies that upon entering the USA I was to marry Rachael (a US
citizen), and now I have the status of a USA resident alien with a green card
work permit. I am still an Australian citizen.
EMPLOYMENT :
February 2001 - present
IntraNet Solutions, Inc.
Position Held : Senior Software Engineer
marchFIRST (consultant agency, formerly Whittman-Hart, originally employed by
BALR Corp.)
Position held : Senior Consultant
June 2000 - January 2001
CorMedical - CorSolutions application development team, Buffalo Grove, Illinois
USA
January 1999 - June 2000
Walgreens - Store Systems - Manager's WorkBench team, Deerfield, Illinois USA
February 1997 - January 1999
The CBE Group, Inc., Waterloo, Iowa USA
Position held : Software Engineer
1995 - 1997
Computer Horizons Corporation (consultant agency)
MCI Communications Corporation - Intelligent Services Platform - Applied
Technology Group,
Cedar Rapids, Iowa USA
1995 - British Telecom ISN Development, ARU Team
1991 - 1994
CSIRO Australia - Division of Information Technology - High Performance
Computing Laboratory
Supercomputing Support Group / Computing Facilities Management
Positions held : Supercomputing Support Officer / Macintosh Systems
Administrator
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE EXPERIENCE :
None. Except for the one year I did as part of my undergraduate course. I have
always had a passion since I was a child for Mathematics, Computer Science,
Artificial Intelligence and Psychology. I did consider getting a post-graduate
degree Masters in Cognitive Science about 10 years ago, but I sold out and
worked full time at my job. Now, that I'm married (no kids yet) and have a
mortgage, and a well paying job, I still feel I'm missing out a lot in the field
of A.I. which is what I really want to be doing.
Recently, I have read "Godel, Escher, Bach", and as expected it explained fairly
concisely things that I've been thinking about for years. I don't remember how I
found www.intelligence.org , but I did. I printed and read most of version 0.9 of
Eli's Friendly AI. I've read most of Eli's stuff at www.sysopmind.com . I
figured while most of my family and friends are SL0 to SL3, I'm SL4, hence me
joining this mail list.
Like any intelligent person dissatisfied with their life, I've had many a dream
about starting my own business, hiring experts and creating what has recently
been formally described to me as Seed A.I. Like any creative person, I have had
many ideas of products that I would like to develop with this A.I. and make lots
of money. Then I discovered WebMind. Just today, I (quickly) read Ben Goertzel's
story and analysis of what went wrong with WebMind. It made me genuinely sad.
Especially if I am ever worthy enough to be involved with WebMind 2, I would
have to move to Brazil! ;-)
I also have a deep non-professional interest in psychology. I like to watch
people. I like to watch myself. I like people watching me ;-) I get enthusiastic
about self-help seminars and motivational speakers. I believe that when Western
medicine doesn't work, there is usually an "alternative" medicine or technique
that will. I believe in meditation, Zen, self-hypnosis. I know about creativity
techniques as designed by Edward de Bono. I know about body language and
communication and persuasion techniques with Neural Linguistic Programming
(NLP). I am very interested in social engineering and how technology affects us.
I'm an atheist, and I don't believe there are UFO's or aliens out there watching
us (although I do run SETI@home, just in case ;-). I can't wait for The
Singularity to occur.
That'll do for now.
cheers,
Simon
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