After working at Giffels Associates the summer after high school, I left for Michigan State University.
Even though I was primarily interested in computers, I chose Mathematics as my major. My reasoning was simple: in fifth grade, I had been given an assignment to write an autobiography, and in that autobiography, I had stated that I would attend college and major in Mathematics. Since the autobiography had been handed in, I was committed. No way was I going to make a liar out of my 10-year-old self.
My advisor was Charlie, who was also my Number Theory professor. Charlie played in a bluegrass band at night, and sometimes showed up to class wearing sunglasses and looking a bit wobbly. I hadn't pegged Charlie as a mischief-maker, but one day he gave the class an assignment that, unbeknownst to us, was an obscure unsolved problem. The crowning achievement of my otherwise unremarkable collegiate mathematics career was recognizing that the problem was research-grade and far beyond my capabilities as a freshman, and hence refusing to waste much time on it.
My major in math didn't last long. When, near the end of the term, I went to Charlie's office to discuss my courses for the next term, he quickly expressed his disapproval: "What's with all these Computer Science classes? I want you to strike them from the list and take Ancient Greek and Advanced German instead." No way was I going to take Ancient Greek, so I sacrificed my fifth-grade reputation and switched my major to Computer Science, as I should have done in the first place.
My new advisor was the head of the Computer Science department, Harry. (Harry was also my boss in a small but weird non-academic venture that I'll have to save for another day.) Before long, Harry was saying "What's with all these Philosophy classes?" But with Harry, I called his bluff, kept taking the Philosophy classes, and got away with it.
It was as a Computer Science major, then, that I had the following conversation at the campus Clinical Center:
Me: Doc, I'm having problems sleeping at night.
Doc: OK. What are you doing for exercise?
Me (puzzled at the sudden change of topic): Oh, I don't get any exercise. I'm a Computer Science major.
Doc: But everyone ought to get regular exercise.
Me: Even Computer Science majors?
Doc: Yes, even Computer Science majors!
I went on to say that I did play recreational volleyball with the my colleagues every once in awhile. Doc said that volleyball was good exercise and I ought to keep it up. But even I knew that standing on a volleyball court and watching someone else jog after a ball that was rolling away wasn't very good exercise.
So I cast around for a sport that involved intense exercise, didn't require a lot of equipment or scheduling, and could be done by someone like me with limited athletic aptitude. It didn't take long for me to settle on running.
The first couple of years were painful, possibly because I ran so infrequently that there was little training effect. Eventually, though, I got to the point where I was running 3 miles once every few weeks. Thus prepared, I signed up for my first race, a 10K in East Lansing.
I had no illusions that I was going to win anything, especially since the distance was more than twice as far as I had ever run before. However, I managed to stagger through the first 5 miles OK. But as I heated up, I began to experience distress to the point where my field of vision began to narrow. Eventually, my vision completely blacked out, so I was running in total darkness. At this point, I wisely backed off on the pace. Quickly a small tunnel opened up right in the middle of my normal field of vision. If I slowed further, the field of vision opened up even more - but that was wasteful. I found I could run pretty well with a very narrow field of vision, especially if I focused on the back of the runner in front of me. So I kept up the fastest pace at which I could still see that person's T-shirt.
After crossing the finish line, I looked at the crowd of people who had already finished and compared it to the mass of people who were still on the course, and guesstimated that I had finished in the top third. I was psyched that I had done so well in my first race, and resolved to do more.
Eventually I became a passable runner, and even met my eventual wife at a running club.
Over a decade later, I came across the published results from that race in a box in my basement. It turned out that I had grossly overestimated my accomplishment, and furthermore had apparently willfully forgotten that I had received the damning race results. So the basis of my encouragement had been a lie, or at least a mistake. But by then there was no turning back.
There were ups and downs in my running career, of course. For instance, in early Spring 2004, I injured myself and had to take off several months from running. Around this time, I also decided it would be a good idea to back off on my relatively strict no-dessert food regimen.
One day in late June, it was unseasonably cool, so I decided to wear some jeans instead of the usual loose-fitting summer cargo shorts. I went to the closet, grabbed my Levis 505s, and tried to pull them on. It was surprisingly difficult. Somehow they had managed to shrink in the time since I had last worn them. This was the same brand and model I had been wearing for years, and I'd never had this problem before. But I wrote it off as some weird clothing thing - after all, I rarely wore jeans in summer, so maybe there was some weather effect.
That fall, my employer, Standard Networks, held its usual Circle of Excellence dinner. Unlike my boss at my previous employer, who had tried to invite only the truly excellent employees to her vacation home for a celebration, my current boss recognized that it was impractical to leave certain people out. Hence everyone was designated as Excellent for the purpose of getting a free dinner.
At dinner, as I reached for a slice of pizza, the boss, R, said "You're not going to have a third slice of pizza, are you, Mark? You're getting rather chubby, you know."
I puzzled over this typically vague statement from R, trying to tease out its meaning. Eventually I shrugged, took the slice, and ate it.
That night, as I pondered the possible meaning of my boss's utterance, it occurred to me that it might be a good time to get on the scale. This was something I hadn't done in quite a while, almost as if I had been avoiding it.
When I stepped on the scale - the same one I had used since childhood (my parents gave it to me when I got my own place) - I didn't like what I saw.
Was the scale broken? The pants strangely sensitive to the time of year? The Circle of Excellence comments truly unfathomable? I knew enough about Occam's Razor to be able to conclude that I needed to lose weight.
It was tough going at first. Although truthfully the amount of weight to be lost wasn't huge, I began to develop some sympathy for others who struggled at losing weight.
One evening I indulged in my retrocomputing hobby by Googling some computers I had used, including the Univac 1108. This quickly led me to http://www.fourmilab.ch/, a wide-ranging website run by John Walker, founder of Autodesk, Inc, and a user of Univac 1100 series machines back in the day. Among the many fascinating sections of this site was the full text of Walker's book The Hacker's Diet, which he had once sold in paper form but was now giving away for free in electronic form.
Though the book itself seemed rather repetitive, the ideas were sound enough. Foremost among these were the concepts of metrics, retrospectives, and rapid iteration. That is to say, weigh yourself every day and if you're not losing weight, you're doing something wrong, so change it. As the book was written in 1991 - long before Kent Beck came on the scene - and John Walker is no shrinking violet, I'm surprised that Walker hasn't claimed to be the progenitor of agile development.
Sticking to Walker's principles, I managed to get back to my fighting weight. And I owed my success to the Univac 1108.
