My first Wikipedia edit was on July 7, 2003, and I began editing in earnest in April, 2006. I reached my 10,000th edit in February, 2014, and my 15,000th in April, 2017. One of my biggest Wikipedia activities is posting new articles, on subjects I either know about or am interested in; I've posted over 400 of them. Another is reworking weak articles that I happen to encounter and take an interest in. I also add information where it's needed and where I can help, and I fix errors wherever I encounter them. I used to watch a handful of controversial articles, mostly to help make them better, but also to see how well/poorly the editors deal with them. It wasn't pretty, so I stopped.
I've started many new articles about U.S. Navy ships and aircraft squadrons. I've also started a significant number on the Navy, ships and shipbuilding, the works of C. G. Jung, and cowboy songs, as well as other topics that happened to interest me. One of the rewards of starting articles is seeing how other editors expand and improve on them. A prime example of this is National Sleep Foundation.
This user has been on Wikipedia for 21 years, 4 months and 11 days.
WARNING: The paragraphs below plainly state the qualifications and accomplishments of an experienced person with many interests. If you consider such material immodest, you shouldn't read further. In any event, remember: If it's true, it isn't bragging.
I think I'm a pretty good editor because...
I've done a lot of reading, especially in encyclopedias. I've been reading since I was three years old; when I was in second grade, the teacher told my parents I was reading at a seventh grade level. I've been reading encyclopedias since those ancient times, and reading them extensively since the 1970's. I've spent countless hours reading the World Book, the Columbia Encyclopedia, and various editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. For many years I owned a copy of the 1911 Eleventh Edition, and spent many hours perusing it. IMHO, the guys who wrote it really knew how to write an encyclopedia. Very little of what they wrote was later shown to be wrong.
I've learned at the feet of high masters. I got straight A's in high school (back when that was harder to do), and I earned degrees in rigorous subjects from Duke University (electrical engineering, with advanced placement in freshman English) and the University of Chicago (MBA in marketing and economics). I was far from earning straight A's at either place, but I got my share of them, plus a few D's, in a time when A's were much harder to get, and D's much easier. More recently, I've spent quality learning time at the feet of Tony Robbins, Robert Kiyosaki, and Thomas L. Saaty.
Many have seen fit to publish my writings. That includes about 500 articles, columns, programs and reviews for dozens of publications, from local newspapers to computer magazines with worldwide circulation. During my "computer period" in the 1980's, I was a prolific and well-known writer on Commodore subjects. I wrote dozens of articles, two books (one of them translated into Italian) and several very popular columns, most notably the Magic column in RUN magazine. (You can see the names and full text of some of the computer articles HERE). My work was reprinted in six other books that I know of. Though my computer writing spanned all the computers of the day, it stopped when Commodore faded from the scene. Since then, most of my writing has been for newsletters, web sites, corporate research reports, etc., though I occasionally do an article for a magazine. When writing for publication, I'm usually known as Louis F. Sander.
And I've published many of my own. In the not-formally-published-by-others category, I've written or compiled almost 300 online obituaries, about a hundred poems, and over 400 new articles in Wikipedia. I'm the creator and proprietor of four large web sites, for The USS Rankin AssociationHERE, a pre-Facebook personal site HERE, for The Alliance of Military ReunionsHERE, and a comprehensive exposition of the 100 Top Western Songs of all time HERE. I also publish an eight-page, 1,300-copy quarterly newsletter for my Navy ship reunion group. We think it's one of the very best newsletters of its type. You can see it, including back issues, HERE. Nice, huh?
I've done a lot of editing in Wikipedia. My first edit was in July, 2003. As of early 2017, I've made over 15,000 edits in all and started more than 400 articles. Time flies.
Et cetera. I spent twelve years as chairman of the board of a regionally important public library. In connection with that work, I spent hundreds of hours in dozens of different libraries, where I learned a lot about information and how it's created, processed, and disseminated. Also, as stated up above, I have taught logic and critical thinking.
The bottom line is that I've spent over 70 years absorbing and disseminating knowledge, and cultivating the art of being right. The most important part of that art is that when you aren't right, you admit it and learn from your mistake. Whatever my abilities in the less important areas of the art, I claim absolute mastery of that one.
NOTE: I've been reorganizing this section to group like material together, hopefully under meaningful headings. The non-reorganized stuff is down at the end.Lou Sander (talk) 17:42, 19 March 2017 (UTC)
When I was seven years old, I was shot at by a group of nonwhites who didn't like the names my friend Henry told me to call them. The (expletive deleted) missed. The same year, I stood alone on a sidewalk, about two feet from a rabid dog. I knew what rabies was, and I knew he had it. (As you might imagine, that stuff builds a kid's self-confidence; read on.) As an adult, I've had a root canal treatment without anesthesia, and I've watched a total stranger die. I've walked, alone, unarmed and unafraid, down foreign streets where a revolution was in progress and the intersections were guarded by stressed-outteenagers with machine guns.
I can pin down some other influences in my early life. As a schoolboy I remember being taken to a handful of circuses, prize fights, and minstrel shows. I spent a lot of time in Sunday school, all of it either with Presbyterians or Methodists. To this day, I don't understand the differences between the two of them. My father was president and later a Life Member of the Berkeley Hills Fire Department; they held monthly raffles to raise money, and as a kid I sold a LOT of tickets. Though I never joined any Masonic organizations, my family was heavily involved in them. My father was Master of his lodge, and I'm pretty sure that both my grandfathers were Masons. My mother and her mother were heavily involved in the Order of the Eastern Star and the Order of the Amaranth. After I left home, my father became a Shriner and was active in the Rotary Club. I attended my father's Masonic funeral; it was the first one I had ever seen.
My father was a Boy Scout. I was a Cub Scout, a Boy Scout, and an Explorer Scout. One of my sons was a Webelos, and the other was a member, with me, of YMCA Indian Guides. All of us, to some extent, incorporated the values taught by those organizations. A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Us, too.
Media
I was heard on local radio before I was in high school. For several years I was a featured personality on AOL's predecessor Quantum Link. (I was online there on its first day of operation.) I've twice had 15 minutes of fame on local TV. The first was coverage of my Computer Kindergarten classes in the early 1980s. The second was in my role as an expert on pornography in public libraries (I'm against it). A major TV station sent a crew to my home to interview me as I called up naughty bits on my laptop. Fun, that.
My published writing has been read in dozens of countries large and small (e.g., Australia and Papua New Guinea), and one of my books was translated into Italian. In the early days of personal computers, The Chicago Manual of Style was doing a poor job of dealing with the new range of computer-related material. I made some suggestions to the editors, and they incorporated them into their next edition. I've alerted the Oxford English Dictionary to a missed meaning of pigstick, but I don't know if they've accepted it.
In 2011 I went to my first-ever gathering of Wikipedia contributors, a Wiknic. It was the first time I had ever met any other editors (except for a few that I have taught how to edit). They were interesting people, and not nearly as strange as I had expected. (Being a bit strange myself, I KNOW about strange.) I went to another Wiknic in 2013; same place, most of the same attendees. All who had been there two years ago remembered one another.
I deeply distrust the New York Times, especially since Jayson Blair came out. CBS, too, especially since Dan. Now NBC is in the same boat, thanks to the "misremembering" of Brian Williams. Is there no end to these people? I greatly admire Fred on Everything, for both his thinking and his writing.
Later I served in a then-Top-SecretNavy Special Forces unit, where I learned to kill and went through the then-current version of survival school. I never came close to needing or using those skills, but I suppose they're still in there somewhere. Wherever they are, they should stay there—don't (expletive deleted) with me.
In my brief Navy career, I holystoned teak decks, climbed to the tops of masts, stood watches in engine rooms and CICs and on quarterdecks and bridges. I was on deck when my ship fired a salvo from her 8"/55 caliber guns; it's something I will never forget. (The Navy also taught me to swear like a sailor, and from time to time I exercise that skill.) I conned several ships, made fixes by celestial navigation, and landed on beaches in ramped boats and an LVT. In addition to the LVT, I boarded and departed ships by brow, accommodation ladder, cargo net, davit, Jacob's ladder, cargo boom, highline, and helicopter. I encrypted and decryptedclassified messages, ate on mess decks and in wardrooms, and did most of the things that seafaring people do. I saw and handled chaff and reported more than one mail buoy. I also had a Final Top Secret security clearance. At one time I considered myself pretty salty for a fellow my age, and I think I really was. Forty years later, I assembled a pretty good glossary of Naval Terminology. You can see it and download it HERE.
I've only been on one organized athletic team, a short-lived junior high schooltrack team, but I've been involved in athletics as a participant and spectator. I was a decent club-level tennis player (3.0-3.5) into my 50s, and I was once a fairly good recreational volleyball player.
I was in a Shadyside bar when I saw Christian Laettner make "the shot" against the Kentucky Wildcats. (I was at a party and wasn't even watching the game; I saw it on the way to the men's room.) I once met Coach K and his wife at the Charlotte airport; they didn't recognize me. As a Duke freshman on January 27, 1958, I saw the unranked Duke Blue Devils basketball team beat the #1-ranked West Virginia Mountaineers with Jerry West and Mary Lou Retton's future father Ronnie, 72-68. Wow! The next Thanksgiving, on national TV, I saw the nationally-ranked Duke football team get crushed 50-0 by their pathetically weak arch-rival, the North Carolina Tar Heels. Win some, lose some, I guess. Also at Duke I briefly met Dave Sime, who at that time was the "world's fastest man."
There are rumors that I am a well-known rodeo cowboy, specializing in a somewhat unusual event. I have no comment.
Games
When I was younger, I played chess, Scrabble, acey-deucey, hearts, pinochle, and even Canasta. I was very good at Scrabble, and OK at the rest of them. In the early 1990s, my friend Laura Hopper and I were co-winners of one of Games Magazine's most difficult contests ever; we deserved it. Today, I play very few games. I do consistently win 60-65% of my medium difficulty tries at spider solitaire, though (my best run is 40 wins out of 50 games, or 80%). I also play the lottery, especially when the prizes are large. Some might see me as a high roller, since I've often bought $3,000 worth of Powerball and Mega Millions tickets at one fell swoop. (Actually, it's for a 100+ player lottery pool that I operate. We win money at every drawing, but we haven't won the big one yet.)
Since 2012 or so, a close friend and I have been working many of The New York Times crossword puzzles. We collaborate via video Skype, and as a team we are pretty good. It is not unusual for us to finish the Sunday puzzle without any mistakes and without looking up any answers. We almost always finish the Wednesday through Saturday puzzles without mistakes, about half the time with the aid of a small number of Wikipedia or Google look-ups. Mondays and Tuesdays are pieces of cake. My history with crossword puzzles began when I was a kid and watched my maternal grandmother doing them. I remember them being so hard that I had to do the "skeleton puzzles," where the words are given and must be fit into a framework. I remember doing crosswords at Duke. Also, during periods of boredom in the shore-duty Navy, three to six other officers and I would gather around a table and jointly work the crossword in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. One of us would read the clues aloud, the group would agree on an answer and shout it out, and another of us would print it into the grid. As I recall, we'd usually finish a puzzle as fast as the designated scribe could print.
Music / Arts / Entertainment
Though my father, mother, two aunts, father-in-law, and son-in-law are or spent some time as professional musicians (tenor, cellist, virtuosoviolinists and pianists, clarinetist/trumpeter and drummer, respectively), I don't make any music myself. (When the other kids in the neighborhood were taking swimming lessons, my parents signed me up for piano lessons. It pissed me off, and I rebelled; due to that break in my education, I never learned to swim until I needed it for the Navy.) My greatest musical accomplishment is creation of a pretty good web site about The 100 Top Western Songs of All Time. If I had ever learned to make music, I think I could have been a good songwriter or lyricist. Download this 205KB PDF file and see if you agree. Two of my granddaughters have continued the family musical tradition: one, age seventeen, has sung for money at an under-21 club and drew a decent-sized crowd. (I guess that makes her a professional musician, or at least a pre-professional.) Her sister, age fourteen, has played Ti Moune, the lead character in an amateur production of the musical Once on This Island. Both of them have appeared on stage with their musician father at professional venues, and were background singers on his 2015 indie CD. Their brother, age twelve, appeared on drums there.
When I was a little kid in the early 1940s, I owned a 78 rpm record player with an electric motor and mechanical sound reproduction. They don't make 'em like that any more. Records were scarce in those days, and I think I owned two of them, or maybe only one. One was Schubert's Marche Militaire; I recall the melody even today. The other, or maybe the other side, I remember as being called Marche Lorraine, though the music doesn't sound familiar when I listen to it today. Later on, I owned Peter Lind Hayes's Genie the Magic Record; it was released in 1946, so I must have had it in first or second grade. When I heard the record again in 2010, I remembered most of the words from the singing introduction. When I listen to the scratchy version in the link above, I recall every single thing that's on that side of the record.
In later years I lost my enthusiasm for live music, but I've attended concerts by Gordon Lightfoot, Judy Collins, and Rusted Root, both on their own and as part of the H.O.R.D.E tour. I've seen one opera, a Pittsburgh Opera production of Madama Butterfly, where I learned that I don't appreciate opera very much. Today, I like classical music for its beauty and relaxing qualities, oldies because I heard them when they were new, and country music for its artistry and its honesty in depicting real life. I can easily get goose bumps over Lorrie Morgan's Something in Red, which isn't just about shopping. (If you follow the link, scroll down to read the lyrics. Be sure to allow the popup so you can hear the music, too.)
In 2016, I was cast as a paid background actor in the Netflix television series Mindhunter. My character appeared briefly in the car crash scene in Season 1, Episode 4.
My favorite movies include The Blues Brothers and Men in Black, or any of their sequels. A recent addition to my all-time favorites is RED. In case you think I only like films with colors in the titles, I also like The Sand Pebbles, the original of which I read in serial form in the Saturday Evening Post. The first movie I ever saw was Dumbo, and I remember seeing Fantasia as a very little kid. Today, I rarely see a film, but I sometimes watch Turner Classic Movies on TV. Except for addictions to Law & Order and Murdoch Mysteries, neither my wife nor I watch dramatic programming on television. (We have never seen a minute of CSI, for example, and we probably never will.)
Like The Daily Show and Rush Limbaugh, I know how to mix humor with truth, and I can pack lots of both into one paragraph. All facts but one in this and the prior paragraphs are absolutely, and usually verifiably, true. (The humor's in there, too, but it's also in the eye of the beholder. Some of it is also in the links.)
Rides
The first car I remember riding in was my father's 1941 Chevrolet. The first one I owned was a 1953 Chevrolet. Since then, I've owned a lot of them, notably a white Firebird convertible, two other Firebirds, and a Grand Prix that a female British radiologist called "the most beautiful motorcar I've ever seen." Most of the others have been GM or foreign. I buy them new or used, and I sell them when they no longer pass State Inspection. You save a lot of money that way. Sometimes I have to get rid of them earlier: two Buicks were "totaled" by the insurance company after minor accidents, another one suffered a cracked engine block when I had too much water and too little antifreeze in it, and my beloved 1984 Volvo 760, like so many others of its kind, broke a timing chain and was rendered beyond economical repair. In 2013, my twelve-year-old red Mazda Protegé 5 Zoom-Zoom succumbed to extensive rust, and I traded it in on a new 2012 Mazda3.
I've always owned and loved a lot of tools. When I was seven years old, my father bought me an adult-style metal toolbox with a bunch of adult-style tools. I remember there was a keyhole saw, some wood chisels, some nail sets and a combination square (not all the tools were suitable for a seven-year-old, but I wasn't complaining). I still have the toolbox, one or two of the wood chisels, the square, and maybe the saw.
As a homeowner, I've always had lots of garden tools, plus the hand tools and small power tools that are found in many American homes. For many years one of my proudest possessions was a Shopsmith 10er. I had a ton of accessories for it, including a speed changer, a scroll saw and a set of lathe chisels. I sold it, regrettably, after a long period of disuse. Today my only large power tool is a mid-range Ryobitable saw, but I look longingly at others every time I visit Harbor Freight Tools. So many goodies, such incredible prices!
Like many men who love tools, I have a number of tools that belonged to my father and my grandfather. The latter include a vise, a spirit level, two sickles and some Stillson wrenches.
Computers and electronics
For a guy who's never been employed as an IT professional, I know a lot about computers and computing. I used a slide rule in college, and one of the Ph.D. students there worked in a room that contained some sort of electronic computer. I don't think I ever went inside it. After college, I served on Navy ships that used mechanical analog computers for fire control. My first exposure to digital computers was as an MBA student in 1965, when I wrote programs in FORTRAN. We wrote our programs on paper, then used a keypunch machine to put them onto punched cards. We'd put the cards into a mail tray, and a few days later a printout of our programs and their output would be returned to us. In 1967, I managed a small punched card accounting department. I was good at running the department and specifying new reports, but I never learned to wire the boards. In 1971 I began working in computer sales. I sold many systems, from standalone minicomputer systems to specialized timesharing applications running on mainframes. I always liked what these systems did, but as a sales rep, I never really got into programming them.
I bought my first computer, a Commodore PET, in 1979. Since then, I've spent over 20,000 hours at various computer keyboards. I've owned at least twenty different computers, and my laser printer is bigger and faster than yours. So, probably, are my three 13x19 inch inkjets. I am (or at least have been) an exceptionally creative amateur programmer, mostly in various forms of BASIC. In the 1980s, I was a prolific and well-known writer for the computer magazines of the day, mostly covering Commodore computers. My Magic column was the most popular feature of RUN magazine, which in 1985 was the second fastest-growing U.S. magazine of any kind. My pioneering Computer Kindergarten course was popular in the early 1980s, and since then I've taught many computer courses at the college level, mostly emphasizing application software and computer literacy. Today I'm mostly just a user, but I sometimes dabble in macros, VBA, and similar areas. In late 2010 I acquired an iPad, which I've come to regard as a modern-day miracle. The Apple store training staff is something a little bit less than that, having pronounced it as "awesome" when I learned how to cut, copy, and paste on the iPad. Sheesh! In late 2014, I got a 6" Kindle Fire HD. It, too, is a miracle of technology, but, to me, it is an even bigger miracle of economics. It cost $99.99, the same as my first four-function handheld calculator in 1974. We live in wondrous times.
My travels have allowed me to see some pretty large manufactured objects, too—notably the USS Gerald R. Ford (along with the CNO and hundreds of other guests, I saw her being christened) and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, used for exploring deep space.
When I was in college, some friends and I hitchhiked to some hick town to watch a KKK rally that had gotten some notorious publicity. The Klan was upset about something that the Lumbees were doing. The rally never materialized, but we did see a car full of people wearing white hoods, all ducked down and hiding. Otherwise, the place was crawling with cops. All in all, it was an excellent adventure for a college kid.
Law & politics
I've been both plaintiff and defendant in lawsuits for meaningful amounts of money, and I've been a key witness for a plaintiff in Federal District Court (my guy won). The IRS once confiscated my car, and kept it for over a year. In the end, I beat them. I've run for public office, and I've attended a session of a state supreme court. I've had regionally powerful political enemies. As a community organizer, I have affected the outcome of local elections. I know a lot about voting machines and voter fraud. (Republicans are newcomers, and amateurs; the other guys are, or at least they were in their heyday, highly trained professionals.) I have collected money on a real estate title insurance policy, and there's land I can acquire by adverse possession (but the legal fees would be more than the land is worth).
Some of my friends and students are criminals or victims of crime: my friend and coauthor Joseph R. Charnetski spent ten years in prison for killing his wife with a hammer; my student Angelique Enty was shot dead by a no-good boyfriend, who then committed suicide; another student's son was shot to death by one of his gangsta associates. Others of my friends and former students work in law enforcement, some of them in sophisticated cybercrime units. They can and do find people who vandalize pages on the Internet. Be careful.
Notable people
I've met and talked with some notable people, including Bill Gates, Steve Case, George Shultz, and Nobel laureatesHerbert A. Simon and Godfrey Hounsfield. (Of all those big-time guys, only Steve Case might remember me.) I never met Timothy McVeigh, but I edited his writing and got it published for him. It was his very first national exposure. I hope I wasn't responsible for lighting his passion for fame, but if I was, so be it. (I'm pretty sure he had big-time help with the bombing, and I'm absolutely sure he'd remember me, if he were still among the living.)
I went to my twenty-fifth high school class reunion, and now I've gone to my fiftieth, fifty-fifth, and fifty-seventh (Class of 1957). Go Indians! Classmates remembered me as very smart and very funny, especially the latter. I told 'em if they wanted to know what I'd done since high school, they could see a lot of it right here. You should go to your own reunions—you'll find treasures there that you don't even know you have. You can even fall in love there. Believe it.
In 2011 I went to my fiftieth college reunion at Duke University. The place has changed a LOT. I saw one of my freshman roommates and probably my best friend at Duke. I hadn't seen them for fifty and twenty-five years, respectively; all of us remembered each other fondly. The highlight of the event was lunch on Saturday, where Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, addressed the class. During his remarks, this extremely successful man gave us advice on how we could duplicate his success in life. The best of it, repeated four or five times during his presentation, was "Don't talk while the guest speaker is speaking."
Since 2004, I have sponsored and been in charge of fifteen Navy ship reunions, all of them planned and managed by professional planning companies. I am also the Executive Director of The Alliance of Military Reunions, a membership organization for the military reunion community.
Career
I spent the summer after high school as a meter reader for Duquesne Light Company, our local electric utility. I'd put on my uniform and a parent would drop me off at the company's downtown headquarters. There I'd be given a metal box with up to a few hundred punched cards it it. The number varied greatly, and depended on the number of meters to be read on that particular route. I was also given enough money to for bus or streetcar fare back home from the end of the route. Then several of us would pile into a company car and be driven to the start of our routes. I'd read the meters and pencil in the reading on each card. When I finished all the cards in the deck, I could go home. Dogs were a real hazard–a dog can sense a meter reader from several blocks away, and one of us would be bitten every week or so. I was paid $1.00 or $1.50 per hour, and I felt very well-off.
Summers in college were taken up by Navy midshipman cruises, but one summer I had six weeks off. I worked at a local Western Electric facility, disassembling telephone handsets so their component pieces could be refurbished. I took apart something like 600 handsets a day, and it was the most boring thing I had ever done. It remains so today. After college I spent four years as a Naval officer.
My first full-time job in industry (1965) was with Motorola, where one of the big guys in engineering was Marty Cooper, who later invented the cell phone. I was a minor person in the marketing department, but I carried a pager and used a Xerox 914 copy machine. Motorola was a pretty progressive company.
After Motorola I worked in management at a Boise Cascade factory, basically a printing plant, that made decorative paper bags and gift wrap. After two years there, I began a long career selling high-tech products to hospitals.
My personal medical experiences include being probed diagnostically by EKG, xray, EMG, MRI, medical ultrasound, and SPECT. I went under the knife for an inguinal hernia and hydrocele when I was seven years old, repair of a double hernia when I was in my fifties, repair of a single incarcerated one on Easter Sunday, 2001, and repair of a rotator cuff tear in 2003. I had a laparoscopic cholecystectomy (gall bladder removal) in 2015. The hernia surgeries weren't painful or disruptive, but the rotator cuff was a different matter. There's a lot of pain with that surgery, and recovery involves six weeks of immobilization of the shoulder, followed by lengthy physical therapy, also painful in the early days. If you don't do the physical therapy, your shoulder might not recover fully or at all. I did mine religiously, and my recovery was 100%. If you ever have rotator cuff surgery, please follow through with the therapy (a lot of people let it slide). The gallbladder attack woke me up in the middle of the night with extreme uncontrollable pain. I was admitted to a local hospital through the ER the next morning, and operated on later that day. The surgery was painless and the recovery was brief and uneventful. Medical science really knows how to deal with gallbladders. Hernias, too.
I'm also subject to seasonal affective disorder. It hit me pretty hard in the mid-1990s, but these days it's mostly a nuisance that makes life less satisfying in the winter. In the winter of 2013-2014, I regularly used this light for an hour a day, about a foot from my face, and it completely banished my symptoms. It has performed similar service since then.
I had other interesting experiences, too. One time I was working on a large sale to a hospital in Ohio. They had committed to buy my product, so I took my sales manager with me for the final contract signing for the biggest sale in my life. When we got there, the customer told us he had changed his mind and was going with a competitor. Heartbreak hotel, and what an embarrassment! One week later, their town was leveled by a tornado. Once again, don't (expletive deleted) with me. ;-)
When I worked for Digital Equipment Corporation in the early 1970s, I sold 8KB of 8-bit computer memory for $10,000. At those prices today, a 4GB flash drive would cost $5.2 billion. Do the math.
I was at Digital when I sold the previously mentioned laboratory information systems. Today, such things are in just about every lab in the industrialized world, but back then, they were new and mysterious articles. At one time, I had sold more of them than any other person in the world: two.
When my time in the medical world was done, I spent a few years with an industrial market research firm, mostly studying heavy industries. One notable project there was a study of the use of conveyor belts in mining, done for the Electric Power Research Institute. I learned a lot of interesting stuff from it.
Original material, not reorganized
I have visited the main campuses of these colleges and universities:
I am a reasonably sophisticated amateur psychologist, especially with regard to the work and ideas of Carl Jung. I have expert knowledge of his theory of psychological types, including its popular manifestation in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. I'm ENTP, the rational Inventor. They do things like making this crazy user page and living the life it depicts. (Jung said that people see ENTPs as "amoral adventurers." He was right. They are wrong about the "amoral," and right about the "adventurers.")
I am a faithful husband, and I am safe around women and girls, even if they are stunningly attractive. That having been said, there is room in my heart, including at its very center, for hundreds and hundreds of people, including, possibly, you. I love little children, and I can make any baby or toddler smile. I hug my grandchildren (ages 16, 14, and 12) at every opportunity, and have done so since they were born. If their mothers allow it, I also hug their little friends (one of them, when my oldest granddaughter was five, adopted me as her grandfather). I tell my students I love them like my nieces and nephews; they believe it because I mean it. I'm pretty much fond of people from cultures other than my own; I generally like the Jews, Arabs and Parsis I've met, and considering my age and ethnicity, I'm pretty good friends with a remarkable number of Negroes. (Six of the latter are my informally adopted sons or daughters.) I have a rap that dozens of blacks have applauded, and I can speak in black dialect in a way that only offends dull-witted white folk. I eat, and like, collard greens and black-eyed peas; they are best if cooked with fatback and followed with sweet potato pie. Okra is some pretty good soul food, too.
As a teacher, I practice the soft bigotry of low expectations. My students definitely appreciate it.
Since I was a little kid, I have been fascinated by office supplies. I like to know about them, shop for them, buy them, own them, and use them. I know that there are other people like me, but I'm not aware of any clubs or organizations. I think there must be a word for us, but I don't know what it is. My favorite pencil, by far, is the Pentel Quicker Clicker, in all its colors and lead types, and I own a lot of them. Also, like the astronauts in the International Space Station, I love and use the Sharpie. Though I don't own any of THESE, I'd be pleased to get any of them as a gift. I empathise with many of THESE euphoric experiences, but I am not in favor of office supplies that come in pastel colors or that in any way are designed to be "cute".
A view of the gardenLooking out from the forest
Except for the identity-theft jokes, this stuff is also true: My ancestors were German and Swiss—I think some were Pennsylvania Dutch. My maternal grandfather was a successful and somewhat famous mechanical engineer whose forebears came to America in 1755, probably to escape religious persecution. He died before I was born, as the result of an industrial accident. My paternal grandfather came here from Germany in the 19th century, married another German immigrant, and became a grocer in Charleston, SC. One of their four sons died as a preschooler from lockjaw. The other three graduated from Clemson as electrical engineers. Their three daughters married and raised families. My father graduated from Clemson (class of 1928), and my maternal grandfather from Penn State (1904), where he was a varsityfootball player. The girl who was to become his wife and my grandmother attended Keuka College. My mother attended Beaver College, but left before graduation. Her twin sisters graduated from Carnegie Tech in 1931. My wife's ancestors were German and Hungarian. Both of us are orphans now, but we don't think it gives us absolute moral authority. (You can think so if you'd like, and both of us will appreciate it.) We've bought and sold seven houses. Our current property is modest in size, and on a undesirably sloping lot, but it includes a forest and a garden. I like to go walking in both—they are home to an abundance of birds and wildlife (you can see a complete list HERE). I have three grown children: a wayward son (D. 10/11/08) whose life was totally ruined by alcohol (but I loved him anyway), a daughter who was a cheerleader and later married a rock star, and a son who was a pretty good college soccer player/track star at Marietta College and is now President and Chief Operating Officer at a Manhattan real estate company. My grandchildren call me "Hubby." My family, neighbors, and long-time friends call me "Skip." My ZIP code is unlisted, and my password is * * * * * * * *. I do not answer emails from Nigeria, but that doesn't make me a racist. I more or less adhere to (esp. nos. 11-13) their Articles of Faith, but that doesn't make me a Mormon. (Though, like some 19th-century members of that church, I have two life partners.) I value beauty, truth, duty, honor and virtue, and I hope that you do, too. (If you don't, it's never too late to start.) I do not lie, cheat, or steal, but all of us are sinners, so occasionally I have done all three. I have never been divorced or arrested, or smoked a cigarette, and neither has my wife. (My wayward son was or did all three, and also spent time in jail and mental hospitals. We blame it all on alcohol, but are open to thinking about other factors, including heredity.)
If you care to know more, just Google Louis Sander and you'll find it. I'm not the famous baby doctor, and I'm definitely not the orchid or the tragically murdered cop.
What I ignore
NOTE TO READERS: Please don't take this material personally or in a negative way—it is intended to be helpful.
Life has taught me to suffer fools, but not to suffer them gladly or for a protracted period of time. It has also taught me about their relatives the assholes and the pissants. Wikipedia has taught me about their other relatives, the dicks and the trolls.
I take note when Wikipedia material strikes me as similar to what one of the five might produce, even if it comes from skilled and intelligent editors who don't fit any of those categories. First, I give it the benefit of the doubt. Then I give it a second chance, and usually a third. After that, I just ignore it. And in spite of constant temptations, I try hard not to give voice lessons. (They just grunt and snout their keyboards.)
Wiki-life has taught me that editors whose words I end up ignoring have one or a number of characteristic behaviors:
They have the attitude that because THEY think it, or believe it, or feel strongly about it, it must be right, regardless of the absence of any justification, and frequently in the presence of contrary evidence.
They ignore or dismiss what YOU think or say, but frequently want to engage you in discussions about what THEY think or say.
They arrogate to themselves the thoughts and behaviors of the larger community of editors, e.g., "This is how WE do things."
They direct you to (often unspecified, e.g., "above") past eye-glazing discussions on talk pages, which discussions often feature their own comments, arguments, personal views, etc.
They use the words "clearly" and "obviously" a lot, especially about things that aren't clear or obvious.
They repeat their arguments, often with an indication that another editor doesn't understand them. "You obviously miss the point of what I said. Here, I will say it again for you." And again, and again, and again.
They suggest that other editors review some sort of Wikipedia policy or guideline. "I suggest you read WP:RS," for example.
When they assert "NPOV!," or "Undue Weight!", or OR! they can't, don't or won't explain the grounds on which they are asserting it. Ditto when they assert "Pseudoscience!" or "Fringe!".
They conjure up reasons why reliable sources that they disagree with are really not reliable.
Their User Pages are empty, sketchy, or hard to believe, or they sometimes claim academic credentials that their edits don't reflect—they write and think at the level of much less-educated people, and they aren't as smooth as Essjay.
"The way of a fool is right in his own eyes." – Proverbs 12:15
Article counts, page counts, edit counts, etc.
This user has been on Wikipedia for 21 years, 4 months and 11 days.
I made my first edit on July 7, 2003, and my 10,000th on February 4, 2014, which was ten years, six months, and 28 days later. I got to 12,000 on March 18, 2014, after six weeks of frenetic article creation, and to 15,000 in April, 2017. Here are my contributions through early April, 2017:
By my own count, I've created 404 new articles, almost all of them reasonably significant in the overall scheme of things (no unknown garage bands, self-published books, etc.—you can see the list in the next section). That article count,does not include redirect pages, since they don't represent new content. It does include articles that replace redirect pages with substantive new material, since they are additions to the information in the encyclopedia. You can see a list of these articles in the section below. I might have missed one here or there, but I try pretty hard to get them all.
According to a Wikipedia tool, I've created 615 of the 6,912,692 pages currently in the English Wikipedia, ranking 2,533rd of all editors. That figure includes 395 non-redirect pages (or "articles") and 220 redirect pages. To see the current numbers for the top 5,000 editors, go HERE. To find mine, do a text search for Lou Sander. I am proud of my contributions, but next to the top-ranked editors I'm nothing but a pissant.
According to two other Wikipedia tools, I've made 14,517 edits, ranking 5,392nd of the 121,641 active Wikipedia editors. To see the numbers for editors #5,001-10,000, go HERE. To find me on the list, do a text search for Lou Sander. To see the numbers for editors #1-5,000, go HERE. Next to these people, I am a miserable little nothing.
You can click HERE to see a totally up-to-date count of my edits, with graphics showing details about when and where they occurred. (N.B.: The counter is continually under construction, so you can't always access it. You can always try later.)
Articles started
I like to work on articles that relate to my short career as a Naval officer, which was spent aboard USS Rankin and as a Beach Jumper. In 2006 that led to starting an article for every Navy ship built at North Carolina Shipbuilding Company, which built the Rankin. (Other people started one or two of them, but I did the rest.) Also during 2006 I created or significantly edited articles for all the Navy's attack cargo ships. This wasn't as hard as it might seem, since the basic facts are available at DANFS. But there was a lot of copy editing, heavy-duty Wikification, fact checking and research. Beginning in late 2013, I started a lot of articles on U.S. Navy aircraft squadrons, even though I've not had much involvement in Naval Aviation. DANAS, the Naval aviation version of DANFS, was extremely helpful. I've also started or modified other articles that interest me, or were red links somewhere, etc., and of course I expand, fix errors, etc. in articles that I encounter that need it.
I've started 117 articles on U.S. Navy ships. Click HERE to see them.
I've also started 121 articles on U.S. Navy aircraft squadrons. Click HERE to see them.
I've started these additional articles relating to the Navy, ships, and shipbuilding:
NOTE 1 – I significantly upgraded this article, but did not start it.
NOTE 2 – This book is not from The Collected Works, but is extracted from one that is.
I've also done a lot of work on other Jung-related articles. Somebody thought it was pretty good:
The Psychology Barnstar
For your impressively comprehensive work on The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, its 20+ volumes, its editor Gerhard Adler, and its hardworking translator R. F. C. Hull, groupuscule hereby awards you this symbolic (Gestaltist-inspired, perhaps archetypally ambiguous) token of appreciation. Thank you for your efforts and your contributions to world knowledge. groupuscule (talk) 19:42, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
I've started these articles relating to songs, songwriters, singers, etc., mostly connected with The Top 100 Western Songs of All Time, a web site with which Wikipedia has a symbiotic relationship, due to its hundreds of links to these and other Wikipedia articles:
Proceso Analítico Jerárquico, a Spanish translation of the above article as rewritten by me. Others did the translation; I assisted with the images and uploading the article.
