My main fun activity is contra dancing.  About twice a month we contra
dance on Saturday night.  Sometimes the dance is for a whole weekend, not
just on Saturday night.  Weekend means Friday night, Part of Saturday
morning, part of Saturday afternoon, Saturday night, and Part of Sunday
morning.  Why do I enjoy contra dancing so much?  I think that it's
because touching the other dancers is integral to the dance.  I hesitated
to admit this because we are supposed to be more high minded. :)

We got into the contra dance,square dance many years ago.  No lessons are
needed.  Newcomers and everyone are shown how to do each dance in a
walkthrough immediately before the dance.

Someone always plays live music for the contra dance.  Because of the
dance, my interest in music increased.  When a friend left her school job
teachin music, and opened up a private music lesson business, I chose to
be one of her perpetual students.  I'm taking a half hour music lesson
once a week.  

I'm still at the very elementary stage.  Currently I'm learning about the
C, F and G chords on the piano.  Perhaps in some distant future I can play
songs at the piano either by memory or by reading music.

I spend a lot of time at the computer.  I worked for the computing center
of Florida State University since my Junior year at FSU.  Recently we
bought a home computer from Gateway 2000.  I am impressed with the disk
memory amount, 6400 megabytes.   Even after all the systems and programs
are loaded onto it there is still over 5 gigabytes left.

I installed fortran and spss on the computer so that I can do programming
for almost anything.  I recently ordered a C compiler so I can learn to
program in C.   Would you like me to write any programs for you?

I'm now a special student at FSU.  This means that I'm not working toward
a degree.  I can take courses in any department.  This first semester as a
special student I'm taking a dis under the research methods professor in
the department of Criminology.  I met the professor, Dr Gary Kleck, as a
consequence of my wife working as program assistant in the department.
Since I was very impressed with Gary's intelligence and statistical
understanding, I wanted to sit in on his class.  When I had to choose an
alternate class because my first choice, learning art, was not possible
until summer, I asked Gary if I could use my one credit hour to sit in on
his class.  Gary explained that I could sit in his class with no problem,
but it would not be for credit.  I would have to take a dis with him and
write a 10 page paper for the credit hour.

In conversation with Gary, because of my feelings about the bad effects of
cigarette smoke, we chose that I'd summarize the 50 state's regulations on
public smoking.  Alabama is the only state that I did not find smoking
regulations for health reasons.  The only regulations I found at the state
level in Alabama were prohibitions to smoke near fireworks and explosives.


In school I majored in mathematics because I enjoyed solving puzzles and
making up algebra problems and solving them.  I fell into my computer
programming carreer because of my mathematical background.


Tell me a little bit more about yourself.

Kermit