College

I started college at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in September 1986. I pursued a double major in Computer Science and Mathematics. I lived on campus in the dormitories until my senior year when I lived with 2 other roommates, John R, and Michael Chun Pong Lam, in downtown Troy, NY. There was one time, at that apartment, that I had to call 911 because someone was overdosing on drugs right outside our door.

I have a lot of funny stories about my roommate John R. He was always doing strange things. I should make a web page just for him. He would sleep through all his classes during the day and study all night - if he wasn't watching movies or playing video games. If he remembered to get up for a test he would ace it and ruin the curve for everyone else. He is one of the most brilliant people I've ever met, yet somewhat short on common sense IMO.

He had a pile of parking tickets in the back of his car which he never paid. Eventually he did have to pay because they wouldn't let him graduate unless he did. The campus police actually used to follow him around. He skipped gym class all semester one time and then tried to make up all the classes for the semester in 2 days. We used to practice ninja training at night. Sometimes he would attack me at random moments to check my martial arts skills - sort of like Kato in the Pink Panther. He once hid in my closet and jumped out at me with an axe when I opened it. He was one of my best friends during college. He went on to become CTO of a web hosting company he co-founded, and also became a professional poker player. We are close friends to this day. I consider him a mentor to my son as well.

I met a lot of interesting people at RPI and generally had a good time. Everybody complained about the cafeteria food, but I loved it. I practiced a lot of martial arts during my college days in spite of having a 21 credit course load every semester and working 12 hours a week at the GE Research & Development Center in Niskayuna as an intern developing finite element models. My mentor there was a wonderful mathematician named Moyyed Hussain.

I went to Karate class on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and Aikido on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. I also helped a friend teach Hapkido to children once a week on Fridays. I went to karate tournaments occasionally. Sometimes I got trophies. Sometimes I was disqualified for excessive contact. Once when I asked my instructor, Andrew Fleming, how I knew it was my turn, he replied "don't worry Barry, they've set things up so that people a lot dumber than you can figure it out".

Summers were spent either as a research assistant (RA) or Intern at GE R&D. It was during my first summer (in 1987) working as an RA that I met a great friend, Rich Mohrmann. He introduced me to a lot of social activities outside of studying. He also joined the Karate club. I remember being so busy most of the time that I had to plan out every minute of every week on a sheet of paper that I carried around with me in my back pocket.

I had trouble staying awake after eating lunch in the cafeteria. There was one class, complex variables, that was right after lunch in which I always fell asleep. I often sat in the front row, hoping that might help me stay awake. When it came time for the big exam, I remember the instructor saying to me as he handed me the exam "I bet you won't fall asleep today". Everyone laughed.

In May 1990, I graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a BS in Computer Science. I had a double major in math and computer science, but somehow I was a few credits shy of getting 2 degrees. I found out about the credit requirement at the last second, and it was too late to do anything about it. Fortunately, I was later able to transfer a few credits from graduate school and get the bachelors degree in math from RPI as well.

I had fun learning computer science at RPI. I remember that their main computer was in a repurposed church. I guess that was symbolic of how technology was replacing religion. It did for me anyway. If we ever wanted something printed, we issued a job, and had to pick it up on a slot at the church. Some of the projects that I recall doing were:

For the summer research assistantship, I implemented courseware using the CMU-tutor (later called cT) language to teach algorithms to computer science students. My advisor was Professor Edwin Rogers. Professor Rogers helped mentor Rich and me in our CS education. I rented a room at a fraternity during this time. It cost $20/week to rent a room. I never considered joining a fraternity, but it was an experience to live at one of their houses for a summer.

The internship at GE corporate R&D was also a positive experience. I was part of a class of about 8 interns from RPI and another local college. My mentor there was Moyyed Hussain. We solved differential equations numerically using systems like Macsyma and Matlab. I remember that one of these programs exported the solution in the form of a Fortran function that was thousands of lines long. I worked on applications such as "over the horizon" radar and inverse problems in electrical current tomography. The latter was meant to help us see the organs inside a human body by hooking up electrodes to the surface of the skin. Not sure if it ever really worked. I only simulated it - never tried it in practice.