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Ben Richardson

Male. Lives in Glendale, Arizona, United States. Born on May 25, 1957. Is single.

About Me

I like solitude. I like some company. Now go home.

More about me. I know myself and I am happy. I... View MoreI like solitude. I like some company. Now go home.

More about me. I know myself and I am happy. I like to work, whether paid or not, I like doing real things that are productive. In 1965 IBM created the mainframe computer and I was in 2nd grade. In 1968 a cadre of companies created IMS (Information Management System), a hierarchical database that runs on the IBM mainframe computer, and I was in 5th grade. 13 years later I left a masters program in Chemistry to become a programmer, also on a mainframe because PCs did not exist and midrange computers were toys that could hardly play pong... and they were super expensive. So by 1983 I was supporting the systems programming of IMS at AT&T in their manufacturing arm (Western Electric) and working in the former Bell Labs datacenter in Greensboro. Now almost 40 years later and IMS is still the fastest and tightest and most capable -- with both a transaction manager far superior to CICS and a NoSQL database that supports airline, banks, insurance, stock markets, and governments all over the world. Did I mention the first application was at NASA to build and track the 6 million parts on a Saturn V moon rocket?

Today I have worked for the largest telecom company in the world, the largest bank card company in the world, the largest pharmacy and PBM in the world -- only 3 jobs for over 37 years (not counting the two years prior as a programmer trainee). In all that time I was laid off once, for one day, and I had a new job the day after that for 10K more per year. I also received 6 months pay during the "notice of layoff" and as severance for the layoff... 6 months pay for 1 day laid off. So I had enough of big corporate tech support... always on-call and mostly unheard unless the high paid consultant happened to tell them what I was already saying... but even then I didn't get credit. So in May 2017 I "retired" from CVS and took a contracting job to merge the legacy American Airlines M&E systems into the former America West, former USAirways M&E system called SCEPTRE... written to track maintenance and millions of parts on trains and planes starting in 1974 and sold to multiple airlines by 1976. The job is complete in time and under budget, and I helped. Now I will be remaining to support the IMS SCEPTRE system for a few more years. Why leave a good job that I actually enjoy getting up to do every day.

If you read all that then you should friendvite me.

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