David McAfee: EWITA Site
Founder and Creator
I was asked the other day "Who are you? - "What is your interest in this site?"- "Who
you am affiliated with?"
Let's start with the easy one -
Who am I affiliated with?
Financially, there are no affiliations that the site has. Technically, there are as many affiliations as there are contributors to this site (perhaps thousands). By these technical affiliations, I mean those that have placed work on this site or have allowed me to put pointers to a specific area of their site, and those whose sites I point at without their permissions.
All fees for the site are paid for out of my pocket. I would be willing to accept sponsorships for the expenses, however they are not that large yet.
What is my interest in this site?
I started this site as a list of Internet resources for my former employer, it was so useful, I put that list and other pointers from my bookmark files on my private page. This was to insure that I could access them from both work and home as well as share them with others in the architecture area. I got sufficient encouragement to continue to expand the site, and upon my retirement from the State of California decided that I wanted my private page for other purposes. However, I had sufficient interest from
Architects around the world in the site that I did not want to shut it down. I now maintain it as a hobby.
Who am I?
My name is David McAfee, I am retired from the State of California after 38 years of service to that organization. I have been in Data Processing (now called Information Technology) for all of those years. Some people hear me quote 39 years as an employee, that is the original 38 with one year of accumulated sick leave.
You can see my resume on the resume page of this site. What is not evident from the resume is the breath of hardware, software and staff I have worked with. From single address mainframes (IBM 702) to the later mainframe (3090) as well as personal computers that ranged from CP/M to UNIX and MS NT, from laptops to room sized computers. Languages and software that were stored on punched Hollerith cards to a 32 gigabyte removable hard drive. I have taught COBOL and Autocoder, used BASIC before there were "visual" versions. Used Turbo Pascal when it first came out. Managed staffs of up to 150 programmers and analysts, phone centers and clerical. Fiscally responsible for programs that disbursed hundreds of millions of dollars.
So if I am retired, why continue to work on projects such as this site?
In simple terms, to keep my mind sharp, and to keep in touch with an industry I love.
