FAQ

Here's a shot at some frequently asked questions:

1.  'Harvid'?? My name seems hard for most humans to say.  One day, my academic team coach in college conflated the terms 'Harold' and 'Harvard' and what came out was 'Harvid'.  Thus a nickname was born.
2. 'miniharryc'? The year was 2003 and as a member of Blogger, I had early access to this newfangled webmail thing called GMail.  I needed to come-up with an email address, and I was tired of my perennial shortname 'hcombs' or 'hcombs0'.   At the time I drove a MINI (2003 R50 5-speed British Racing Green w/white top), so I prepended those 4 letters to the front of an easier way to say my name.  Thus, 'mini-harry-c'.
3. How did you get into programming?  I was never a programmer in High School.  I've always been a computer geek since DOS 2.11 and an Tandy 1000 EX, but was never particularly into programming.  I took a 'CSC 111' class in the Spring of 1998.  I took the next class (the weed-out linked-lists and trees class) the next semester, and I attended an ACM programming competition that fall with very little practical experience.  One of my teammates offered me an internship at Lexmark, which I began in March 1999.  I would stay there for the next 17 years.

I'll edit this to add more as it occurs to me.  These are the general questions that come up most often.