Biography

[Derrick J Brashear]

On Thu, 29 Jun 2000, Fred W. Schneider III wrote:

> It occurs to me that I don't really know most of you.  Oh, I've had
> Derrick Brashear in my home a couple of times.  

I think you're the only person on this list who's made that mistake!

> How about it folks... would each of you mind bashing out a one page
> autobiography so I can associate addresses and names with a living,
> breathing human being?

In a moment...

> variety of people from Lancaster ... may never finish them now that
> Interurban Press is defunct.  Have always wanted to do the definitive
> history of Conestoga Traction Co. (Pennsylvania's 7th largest electric
> system ... 165 miles and 165 cars) and, since retirement, have gone back
> to reading all the local newspapers.  Thought it might also be nice to

Do it, do it, this is one I'd really like to see.

> County), castles, towers, bridges (Marie claims I have an orgasmic
> relationship with the Golden Gate Bridge because I've photographed it
> from so many angles ... from Sausalito, from Yerba Buena Island, from
> the fort below with a ship coming it, and from a Cessna 172 circling
> overhead).

I had limited time in San Fran the one day I was there; This was one thing
I made sure to see.

Everything you never wanted to know about Derrick Brashear

Born: 10 May 1973, West Penn Hospital, Pittsburgh

Places of residence: Forest Hills, age 0-24
                     Trafford, 24-?

And of course some of the time I was in Forest Hills I actually lived in
Oakland, at Carnegie Mellon University.

The house in Trafford used a chunk of inheritance as down-payment, and my
gainful employment (recent at the time) at Carnegie Mellon as my assurance
that I'd continue to be able to pay! I've owned it since October 15, 1995,
but it's still at least slightly "under construction". More on that
further down.

I'm the oldest of 5 children in my family; My father is the youngest of 6
(all boys!) and my mother the older of 2; All of my father's brothers have
children; My mother's sister is not yet married and has no children.
 
Education: St. Maurice, Forest Hills, K-8
           Central Catholic, Pittsburgh, 9-12
           Carnegie Mellon, BS in Civil and Environmental Engineering

Most of my grade school memories are long since repressed. I did get an
interest in computers, the "personal" version of which were in their
infancy during that time. I built on that in high school, as well as
interests in rail, real and model, and ice hockey. 

At some point while in high school, on my frequent trips to the Carnegie
Library, I discovered:
-Tom Parkinson's book, which got me interested in the Pittsburgh system
-the CERA West Penn book, which actually my grandfather had shown me a
 loaned copy of previously
-PCC: From Coast to Coast. The Carnegie had 2 copies, sadly both have been 
 stolen or something. 

These piqued my interest; I photocopied bits of books and went out on
buses and on the T (I was 14 at the time) and started looking around, and
annotating for future use. Weekend family passes were the mainstay of my
travel though occasionally if we started classes late I'd go in at the
regular time and instead of catching my school bus catch an express bus
downtown, make a side trip and head to school. 

Some time later I got my license and on the first weekend I made my first
trip to what was then "Arden Trolley Museum" with a friend of mine who
came with me for the ride. I started to get more appreciation for the PCC
after that, museum car or not!

Anyhow, at that point the former Pittsburgh system was a vast unknown to
me, and I proceeded to walk, drive and bus various parts of it, covering 
the system by and large by the time my first year of college was over. The
lack of a good singular work on the system bothered me, but not a lot
since I was a college student and had no money!

I realized I wasn't going to graduate on time at the end of my 7th
full-time semester at CMU. This had much to do with my discovery of
workstation-class computers at CMU and the large amount of time I sunk
into understanding and then programming the unix variants they ran, in
what was before the web or universal internet access (AOL, Prodigy, GEnie
and Compuserve all existed but you couldn't at that point access any of
them from the internet). I failed some classes because computer work
became more interesting than classwork. Incidentally, because I found free
computer software so helpful in getting where I am, I've written a large
amount of software since that time and given it away. My personal
philosophy is that if I can avoid the intellectual property game, I will,
because it's far too messy to get involved in. To that end I have my own
computers which I do programming on, to avoid confusion on whether I or
CMU owns my non-work work.

Anyhow, I started full-time as a CMU employee on 2 Jan 1995, took one more
class then, and then didn't finish my degree until my credits were about
to expire. I did finish though; As of May 1999 I have a Bachelor of
Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering from CMU.

On 16 October 1995 I closed on a house in Trafford, against the advice of
my parents (who thought I should save my money, but after living away from
home, the whole authority model living in their house was broken in my
mind, and I wanted things which conflicted with my living there. It had
been years since I heard the old "not under my roof" but I took care of
the problem using the put up or shut up method; I put up;-) and after
renovations which I hadn't planned on but we did anyhow, the house was
wired for cable television, network, and telephone in every room (twice in
some rooms; when i say "every" i include the bathroom). In November 1997 I
moved into the house "full time", not coincidentally when a fiber optic T1
internet line appeared in my basement to service an ISP modem pool; I
leeched bandwidth from them. On 22 June 1998 I married Alycia, who I had
been dating since 1992, and she moved in. 

On 10 Nov 1998, we again joined the ranks of modem users as the T1 was
turned off; There's still dark fiber in my basement, but as of 6 weeks ago
we finally were able to get high speed network service again: a cable
modem. This is important since it means I can work from home. Even if I
couldn't, we planned well. Trafford is a one-bus ride from CMU. The 67F
stops at the end of my street and in front of the building I work in. We
live about halfway between Alycia's family and mine. 

The house still needs work, but it's become more sporadic. The upstairs
bathroom is almost done. The kitchen still needs work, and may get a soda
fountain if I can get the pieces cheaply. The basement has a water leak,
and is unfinished. 

Aside from Pittsburgh I also have interest in Johnstown and West Penn (I
considered attempting a Johnstown book and even started on it, but it's
been dead in the water for years now), as well as western PA systems
generally, PRR, trolley and rail systems generally, and "built
environment" even more generally. I've done some work in my "spare time" 
on computer based geographic systems, typically because of interest in
rail systems in the areas covered. Recently I've done work with GPS, a
laptop, and USGS quadrangles and aerial photos, which make some tracking
of old systems easier. The field testing so far has been limited, but I
intend to work it out some more in the future. I have a machine with a
100+ gigabyte stash of USGS data at my disposal for this purpose.

My other computer interests include replicated, distributed systems
(create a service where any one failure will impact no or as few people as
possible; this includes network failure between geographically diverse
sites) and audio handling (mostly because i want something good to listen
to and there are no local radio stations i find to be at all useful)

In my "copious spare time" I do far too many things, including some
computer-related stuff, both programming and putting together computers
for people, some modelling, and some prototype related stuff;
In recent history I've been far busier than I'd like and haven't done as
much as I wanted to, especially research.

Right now, though, I should really be working on completing and rolling
out a new authentication system for my job! Maybe I'll get back to that
for a while before I go grab some food.

-D