My Life has always been interesting
I was born in 1942
I was born in the middle of the second world war. My father was the captain of LST 889 in the pacific theater. I am writing this in 2026, that makes me 84. Going back that many years again places you at 1858 which is before the Civil War!
Things were very different back then. White Castle sold hamburgers for 19 cents. I have a totally mechanical slot machine that used nickels. There were plastic chips called mils that were used to pay tax. Quarters were made of silver, and gold was $35 per ounce. I remeber when our neighbor got a TV, black and white, of course.
Choose between these buttons to learn more of my history.
My Educational History
I went to an Episcopalian church and never had a clue what was going on there. Back then, as now, I had an extremely bad memory. My parents thought that the reason I did poorly in first grade was that I wasn’t challenged, so they had me skip second grade. That was the grade where you were taught cursive writing, So my handwriting is terrible. On the other hand at about age twelve I was sent to Miss Vanderschmidt’s typing school, where I spent time with lovely 16-year old girls training to become secretaries.
The poor performance in first grade was my bad memory, so eventually I had to drop back to my original grade. This labeled me as stupid and everyone was shocked when I got into Princeton. I Had two advantages, though. I was legacy as my father had gone to Princeton, and I applied for aeronautical engineering, and Princeton had just built an engineering campus and needed students to fill it.
I switched to Physics, which seemed much more appropriate for a person with a bad memory, and by the grace of Professor Thomas Carver made the first laser at Princeton. Our grade at Princeton was considered to be a poor one so they divided up a prize, normally given to one person, and I was one of the three recipients out of twenty in the class.
Again to the surprise of everyone I got into MIT. There I did more laser stuff and got a PhD. It was nice there, so I hung around as a post doc for a couple of years.
My Love life
Ellen
I met Ellen Greene in the summer before college. She was amazingly smart and totally adorable. She went to Vassar while I went to Princeton. We saw each other every few weeks while college was in session, and lots during vacation times. Phone calls weren’t free back then so I spent a lot on calls. Worth every penny.
We got married after we graduated and we had two kids: Emily and Elizabeth while I was at MIT. We divorced after 28 years of marriage. Blessedly, she is now my next door neighbor and wonderful friend.
Carol
I met Carol at Ashokan Fiddle and dance camp which Ellen thought it would be fun to go to. There I learned a guitar style that is appropriate for backing up singers, but more importantly I met Carol. Carol was the center of my life for 28 years when she passed away from cancer. for more details of Carol, please look at cahz.us.
Ling
Losing Carol was devastating, and much too quickly, I married Ling Chen. Ling was 49 years old, beautiful, but had a business in Honolulu, and an aged mother in China. More about Ling here: loh3.com/ling
Hui Sun (Helena)
After Ling I had a half year interlude with Camella, who was a more reasonable age of 60. She suggested that her cousin Helena could come live with us. I said OK and she was scheduled to arrive on August tenth. When Camella and I broke up, I asked Helena if she still wanted to come here and she said yes! That was the start of our connection which has grown constantly since. For more info, please look at loh3.com/atlast. that name was chosen for the song with that name which describes how we feel about each other.
Business
Summer Jobs
My first job was when I was about 12, working as errand boy while my father was counsel for the Senate Subcommittee on constitutional rights. I wore a pedometer and delivered paperwork all over Washington DC while getting paid seven cents a mile on my pedometer.
Second job was copy boy, where I got a more reasonable pay, but it was for a morning paper so I didn’t finish until very late.
Next was as line boy at Lobmaster Field outside of St Louis. I got $1 per hour or $1.50. I took the flying time and earned a private pilot’s license thanks to my instructor Henry Herman. Once I landed the plane with a terrible bounce, and said “ what a terrible landing”, to which Henry responded “any landing you walk away from was a good landing”.
ONSET
When I finally left mother MIT, Ellen and I moved to cape cod, buying ehe house, barn and shed that Benthos had started in. Ellen and I had been living with Win and Ginger Hill. Win had started Sea Data Corp. and I bought his C-44 bus line from Win and started my own company “Onset Computer Corp.” My father suggested that name, which was the name of a neighboring town.
Integrated circuits were rapidly improving and was able to design my first complete product (Honest Observer by Onset), selling it at 1/10 the price of the competition. The company grew and soon wouldn’t fit in the shed and barn combined, so I bought a 10,000 sqft building. More time passed and we had to move to a 40,000 sqft failed mall.
At about this time I found Carol and we moved to Hilo Hawaii and set up a branch office there. That worked for a while until my best engineer, Mark Hruska, explained to me that it was time for me to retire from Onset, which I did.
Lavaloha
The sugar cane companies found that the could not make money and started selling their land.
Philosophy
Under construction