Biographies of The Internet Oracle Priesthood

Rich McGee

Tenure: February 1992-Present

McGee, Rich McGee. System Programmer at Cal State University, San Bernardino (Motto: Send your kids here! We need higher enrollment to justify bigger computers for the staff).

No relation to "Fibber", and I've never met anyone named Molly. Some day, I hope to discover a wealthy cousin named Bobby who owns a string of popular nightclubs, but I can only hope I don't have a brother named "Dirty Dingus", or an uncle who chases after The Incredible Hulk.

Location: My office is located mere yards from one of the largest earthquake faults running throuout the state of California. Last month, my building was declared to be the third most unsafe structure among all buildings, statewide.

I graduated "many moons ago" with a degree in English Literature, and tried teaching at the local high school. I lasted 6 weeks after I discovered that the highest reading level in any of my clases (of 37 students per class) was 4th grade. That, plus the fact that five students 'ditched' on the first day when I turned my back to write my name on the chalkboard.

Back to grad school, last refuge of the under-employed. Finished all the requirements for a CS degree, except for the math, which I still shun.

During this time, I was picked by our Computer Center as the campus PC trainer and hardware repair person. This meant one more useful thing: Free tuition! A fee waiver is a wonderful thing.

Started working on my M.A. in Computers and Composition Rhetoric, finished all the classes, got the thesis approved, then had to put it on hold for the past three years as our university gave painful birth to a brand new data center. I should be back working on it this spring, but want to change the focus to the lack of audience awareness in technical writing.

When I'm not answering voice mail, my hobbies include stunt kite flying, amateur and packet radio (N6MGT @ W6JBT), competitive auto rallies, and surfing the Internet.

Computer Acronyms Spoken:

BSD, DOS, CICS, MVS, MAC, NeXt, OS/2, SMTP, SMP/E, SUN, TCP/IP, VMS, VM, VTAM and probably a few more I've forgotten!