Ubiquity FAQ

Brief Biography:

Born 16 September 1952 in Dallas, Texas, USA. Educated in Texas, England and Saskatchewan. Met future wife, Roma Adelman, 1969. Received B.Sc., 1974, Pure and Applied Mathematics, from University of Sheffield, England. Married Roma Adelman 1975. Obtained Ph.D., 1979, Mathematical Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas. Dissertation: The Numerical Integration of Einstein's Equations. Conceived and assisted on early implementation of Michael Hoffman (1980) and Eric Hoffman (1985). Worked for Texas Instruments in Dallas, Exxon in New Jersey, Schlumberger in Houston. Came to IBM as contractor in 1987; became regular employee a year later. Worked as language architect on product now called DB2/2, before it moved to Toronto (1988-1991). IBM Technical Liaison to Taligent, 1992-1994. Divorced 1999, remarried same year to Peggy Deveney. Moved around a lot in IBM Austin, now in AIM Services. Proud father of Abigail Elizabeth Hoffman 5/15/2001. I guess nothing is more important than that, so I'll stop here.

What made you decide to go to school in England?

It was a clerical error. Really. I was invited to attend The Queen's Univerisity in Belfast by a friend of mine in their CS department. He arranged everything, but they asked me to send in an application "just as a formality." Due to the postal strike that year, my application was delayed five months, and it was automatically routed to a clearing house which matched late applications with open seats in British Universities. Belfast requested the application be sent back to them, but Clearing never found it. Meanwhile, although I had stated on the application that I only wanted to study CS, and only at Belfast, a copy of the application had started to wind its way across the UK. In late September, after I had given up hope, I received a letter from the University of Sheffield saying that I was accepted to study Pure Mathematics. I looked up Sheffield in the encyclopedia, and looked up Pure Mathematics in the encyclopedia, said "what the heck!" (or something to that effect) and dashed off to England.

How did you adopt the userid "UBIQUITY"?

It's a long and boring story, that you would have had to have gone to my high school in the sixties to understand. Now it's a tradition: I've had an account called "ubiquity" somewhere in the world every year since 1970.