polyfiversaries

While many more momentous anniversaries are being observed, this month marks some personal-professional milestones:
30 years ago: Back in my college days, started programming in APL, on a pre-PC IBM desktop, with 64K RAM, peripheral floppy drive, & a switch up front to choose between APL and something called 'BASIC', never used the latter, though I did become adept on the firm's Wang word processor, and they later got the IBM-PC equipped with STSC APL; it wasn't all cutting-edge technology back then, though, as my first task was to drive-and-deliver a '35 Dodge pick-up (top speed 45mph) to my new boss in Washington DC, which he had found in Oblong, IL (looks just like it sounds);
25 years ago: Began making models & apps for Merrill Lynch's Debt Strategy Group, as a consultant (later an employee), finding out that my self-taught APL was wizardly, and now I got to do it on a mainframe (IBM 370, VM/CMS) while teaching myself, then others, financial analytics;
20 years ago: Moved back to New York to stay, courtesy of Morgan Stanley's Fixed Income Research;
10 years ago: Became a financial market risk consultant at UBS, 'programmer' dropped from job description.
None of this was a matter of planning or foresight, more of contingency and serendipity.

Non-professionally, lit-blogging will resume once lit-reading does.