Personal Background

My mom was born on a Farm in Cowensville, Pennsylvania in 1917 to a coal miner. She passed away in June 2011 after living a long life to the age of 93. She had nine brothers and sisters, two of whom are still living, including my Aunt Stella. On a recent vaction trip I visited Stella and we went by the house in Cowansville where my mom was born outside of Pittsburg. When my mom was born they did not have a telephone or a car. Those came later. During World War Two, she worked as a drill press operator and is fond of telling a story of how she had an idea to improve the process of using a Jig-bore. She was a giving person with deep common sense. I loved her very much.

My father, Gerard A. Allard, passed away on March 12, 1994. He was the lead circuit and memory system designer for ERMA (Electronic Recording Machine Accounting) the first computer used for processing checks (made for Bank of America by General Electric in the 1960s). He was on the design team for the SDS Sigma computers which were used as the first two nodes of the internet. He was a liberal and a scientific thinker. Although brought up by Nuns in a French Canadian religious school and a devout catholic in his younger years, he abandonned religion during his late twenties and raised his children to think for themselves. I was lucky to have him as a father and I miss him greatly. He was my best friend.

I live in Santa Monica, California. I have two brothers, Eric and Tony, and three nephews, Garret, Trevor, and Alex.

My interests include computer programming, bicycling, economics, wine, society, most sports, chess, and figuring out how it is that the city of Los Angeles has so many cars and so few light-rail trains.