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My name is Lionel Deimel, and I live in
Clifton Springs, New York. For more than three decades before moving here, I
lived in Pennsylvania, mostly in the Pittsburgh area. I am a computer scientist,
consultant, writer, and musician. I am now retired, however.
I was born and reared in
New Orleans, Louisiana. I was privileged to attend
Benjamin Franklin High School, a public magnet school for gifted children
founded before anyone talked about magnet schools. (Franklin is now a charter
school.) I did my undergraduate work at
the University of Chicago in physics,
and earned my M.S. and Ph.D. at Georgia
Tech in information and computer science.
I have taught computer science at
Georgia Tech, North Carolina State University,
and Allegheny College. At the
Software Engineering Institute (SEI) of Carnegie
Mellon University, I promoted software engineering as an
academic discipline, which was a natural career move, given my longstanding
interest in computer science education. Over the years, I pursued research in
automata theory, computational complexity, computer graphics, and human-computer
interaction, with occasional excursions in odd directions, such as recreational
mathematics. I have written extensively on computer science education.
 Even
as a doctoral student at Georgia Tech, I found myself doing a good deal of
writing—technical papers, software documentation, handouts for students. Later,
I became the default editor of papers on which I was a co-author. For many
years, I served either as Director or as Chief Judge for the Association for
Computing Machinery (ACM) Scholastic Programming Contest, for which I had to do
very critical editing of contest problems.
At the SEI, I had more opportunities to write, and I became a serious
technical editor. Not only did I edit material from technical experts, but also
I took on the task of interacting with authors to shape and improve their
output. My sometimes
stormy relationship with the technical writing group at the SEI taught me a good deal
about both writing and editing, as well as getting along with people in spite of
differences. Being a technical editor often requires well-honed negotiation
skills.
I have often thought of writing a book, but I
never seem to have both the time and an exciting topic simultaneously. When I
get around to the task, the product likely will not be a novel, but who knows.
Since I began building Lionel Deimel’s Farrago in 2000, my writing has
expanded beyond the technical. I now am as likely to be writing poetry,
essays, or even music as I am to be drafting database requirements or program documentation.
In 2002, I added Lionel Deimel’s Web Log to my outlets for writing.
I have been playing musical instruments since I was in the third grade, and I
cannot imagine life without music. I justify calling myself a musician  through
my service as an Army bandsman for three years during the Vietnam War; I played
clarinet in Atlanta and Honolulu. I am a member of my church choir, and I have
sung in several church choirs and choral groups over the years. Lately, I
have even written a few songs and (probably more successfully) hymns. My musical
tastes are eclectic, but generally don’t include rock, certainly not the more
aggressive forms of it, in any case. Some of my favorite artists are
Judy Collins,
Carly Simon, Janis Ian,
Joni Mitchell,
Peter, Paul & Mary,
The Seekers, and a
few people you’ve never heard of. I am
passionate about Bach and (especially)
Prokofiev.
I have been an active church member ever since I joined the Episcopal Church
in 1984. I have been a choir member, convention deputy, vestry member, audio-visual
coördinator, and a member of various church and diocesan commissions and committees.
My interests in The Episcopal
Church and the Internet led me to become involved in controversies within my
church and the wider Anglican Communion. I became the first
president of Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh
(PEP), a lay-clergy group dedicated to
preserving a diverse and tolerant Episcopal Church. I was part of the group that
created Via Media USA, a consortium of groups similar to PEP in various
dioceses. I was also the founder of the
No Anglican Covenant
Coalition, an international group opposing the same traditionalists that led
to the creation of PEP.
Retirement has given me more time to pursue some of my other interests,
including
photography, railroads, writing, and recreational math. Although I no longer
feel the need to be an Episcopal Church activist, my passion to save the world
is being channeled into politics. I am interested in science and technology but
don’t seem to have time to keep up-to-date with my reading in these areas.
For many years, I have owned cats. My current cats
are brothers, Charlie and Linus, whom I adopted as kittens just after Christmas
2013.
— LED,3/23/2023 |
