User:Pat Palmer
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I joined Citizendium in 2007 and worked all over the wiki, especially in the Computers Workgroup. I formerly served on the governing council, when no one else would, in hopes of keeping the project alive. When Citizendium almost shut down again in mid 2020 (first year of the COVID-19 era), I wanted to recover the sense of community that is possible when working in a good wiki, so I took ownership of the Citizendium domain and began work behind the scenes to help the project continue.
Beside computers and technology, my interests are wide ranging and include traditional music, languages, science fiction, literature, plants and flowers. I once contributed significantly to an article in here on Coal mining.
- 2008-present: System administration and programming for a group of algae scientists in the Phycology Section at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, where I wrote web services such as this one which shows data about one algal species.
- 2002-2012: Taught computer architecture in the Univ. of Penn. MCIT program; remained as a research associate in the UPenn CIS department until 2020
- 1998-2002: Various computer consulting jobs in elearning and big pharma.
- 1984-1998: Member of technical staff at Bell Laboratories, writing software for embedded systems and light-wave communications and doing all kinds of interesting other stuff.
- M. S. in computer science (Univ. of Tenn., 1983).
- M. A. in public sector management (Fels Center, Univ. of Penn., 1992).
- 1978-1980: I repaired telephone switches for GTE in southwest Virginia and worked in some of the last Strowger switching offices remaining in the United States. I also repaired electromechanical telephone switching systems made by Leich, that had so-called common control units for call routing--in effect, a fully electromechanical, special-purpose computer.
- 1974-1977: I did all the coursework required for a Ph D in Germanic linguistics (Univ. of Tenn., Knoxville); read Old High German, Old Norse, Icelandic, Middle High German, Afrikaans, Pennsylvania Dutch, Yiddish, and various regional German dialects under direction from Professors Nordsieck and Kratz; studied Spanish, Latin, and Russian.
- B. A. in liberal arts; major: German; minor: English (Univ. of Tenn., 1974)